What Is Poetry For?

Debates over what poetry is for are as old as poetry itself, but how does the question change at a time when poetry's audience continues to fragment politically and economically? In conjunction with The Point magazine's issue 12 print symposium on the same topic, please join Poetry editor Don Share and poets and teachers Lamar Jorden, Srikanth Reddy, and Kush Thompson for a moderated discussion about how poets and thinkers are attempting to answer fundamental questions of contemporary poetry's value, method, and role in society. The discussion will include questions such as: Have universities and MFA programs been good for poetry, or just good for poets? Is censorship of art ever justified? And can poetry really contribute positively, as many of its adherents claim, to political progress? 

Lamar Jorden is a published poet, musician, author, performer and educator born and raised in the Austin community on Chicago's west side. Lamar is a multiple winner of Chicago’s Louder Than a Bomb youth poetry festival and starred in the 2010 documentary of the same name, which covered the festival in 2008. Lamar's music project, The Lion Who Learned to Write, is set for release in 2016. As an educator, he was most recently a prominent member of the Teaching Artist Corps at Young Chicago Authors.

Srikanth Reddy is the author of two books of poetry–Facts for Visitors (2004), and Voyager (2011)–both published by the University of California Press.  A book of criticism, Changing Subjects: Digressions in Modern American Poetry, was published by Oxford University Press in 2012. Reddy is currently an Associate Professor of English at the University of Chicago. 

Don Share edits Poetry. He has published three books of poems and edited three anthologies as well as a critical edition of Basil Bunting’s poems. His translations of Miguel Hernández received the TLS Translation Prize. A 2015 VIDA Award recognized his contributions to American literature and literary community.

Kush Thompson is a political-romantic poet, womanist, painter, teaching artist and author of A Church Beneath the Bulldozer. Voted runner-up best local poet of 2014 by The Chicago Reader and one of The Root's 2015 Young Futurists, Kush is the co-founder of The Lady Church initiative where she hosts monthly meetings devoted to womyn empowerment and healing.

Moderator:

Jon Baskin is a founding editor of The Point magazine. 

The Point is a magazine of philosophical writing that embodies two convictions: on the one hand, that humanistic thinking has relevance for contemporary life; on the other, that our lives are full of experiences worth thinking about. The Point adheres to no specific political or social agenda; instead, we ask our readers to participate in a dialogue between diverse intellectual traditions, personalities and points of view. The goal is a society where the examined life is not an abstract ideal but an everyday practice.