A very varied new round up today, with a comparison between entrepreneurs and poets, a proposed anthology of poetry for the late Liu Xiaobo and a mystery poem in a small town in Carmarthen.
Why Potential Entrepreneurs Should Turn to Poetry
You could be forgiven for thinking that there is little correlation between the world of business and poetry but in fact there are more than a few similarities. Both the poet and the entrepreneur must wrestle with a number of issues; from dealing with ambiguities, disrupting conventional wisdoms and even questioning ambitions, in order to create their en
d “product”. And for both of them this can mean paying careful attention to the words that the they use and how they formulate their sentences.
In her book What Poetry Brings to Business, Clare Morgan speaks of a study carried out by Stanford who found that those people who read poetry are far more likely to create more hypotheses and alternative meanings over those people who turn to prose. Unsurprisingly many entrepreneurs are in fact poets or at least poetry enthusiasts. In fact, around 13% of the membership of the Academy of American Poets in made up of businesspeople.
T.S. Elliot started his career as a banker and Wallace Stevens was a lawyer before turning to poetry, more recently Dana Gioia was an executive with General foods before he became an acclaimed poet.
Reading poetry can also make you a better writer; the sort of person who is more likely to notice syntax, word play and allusions. All of these are perfect tools for the entrepreneur when it comes to those all-important communications with investors and clients. In fact, the Academy of American Poets has a listing of several job posts that are available in the field of social-media marketing and advertising. Big companies such as AT&T and Deloitte have also favoured inviting poets to address members of their management teams.
Poet Detained Over Planned Anthology
A few weeks ago, here at My Poetic Side we brought you the sad news that Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese poet and Nobel Peace Laureate had passed away. Fellow poet Wu Minglang, who also goes by the pen-name Langzi, who has recently complied an anthology to commemorate the works of Liu Xiaobo has been detained in the Chinese province of Guangdong on suspicion of “illegal business activity”.
It would seem that the censorship that followed Liu Xiaobo during his life time is following him in his death with the Chinese government apparently reluctant to allow any poems commemorating his life and work to be published. It would seem that if any anthology is to be published then like Liu Xiaobo’s works they will need to be published abroad.
Mystery Poem
Poems can appear in the most unusual of circumstances. A passionate plea in the form of a poem has appeared attached to an old tree in a town square in Carmarthen. The large Silver Maple tree is under threat of being felled as part of the plans for a major overhaul of the town centre. It was found by a member of the Save Our Square whilst he was tidying up the weeds and brambles in the square. The poem goes on to make a passionate plea to save other local areas from redevelopment as well.
You must register to comment. Log in or Register.