Cities are built with language

There is a thread of the rustic in much poetry-- possibly in too much poetry. As Spinks calls it, poetry of "brooks, brambles, and fields."

photo by GL

But not Cleveland poetry. Cleveland poetry tends more to be the poetry of the city, a poetry of cracked asphalt and battered garbage dumpsters and smoking a cigarette in the cold rain outside a bar in Ohio City, not rhapsodizing over a field of daisies.

Tom Chivers-- a London poet-- says

“The city resists nostalgic forms of poetry that have been handed down to us in various traditions. There is this energy and aggression and speed in a city that lends itself to poetry. We are surrounded by language, whether it’s place names, digital signs, advertising hoardings or the voices of market traders – it’s everywhere. Cities are built with language.”

• 'Cities are built with language': how poetry feeds on urban life, by Rosie Spinks.

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--(and, on the subject of cities, check out the latest issue of The City Poetry.)

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