“To be a poet is to be a maker.
A maker with our own heart and with our own imagination.
Poetry is not only the beautiful words we put on a page.
If we make something like a poem in our life,
we too can live like poets.”
– Satish Kumar
World Poetry Day is a time to celebrate this idea – to recognise poetry’s power to distill meaning, emotion, and experience into a few words. These excerpts from poems featured in The Beautiful Truth explore hope, community, and the deeper truths that shape our lives.
Interconnectedness
and Belonging
Here are some of our favourite excerpts that remind us of our potential to be connected through words and stories.
“Perhaps the great error is believing we’re alone,
That the others have come and gone—a momentary blip—
When all along, space might be choc-full of traffic.”
Excerpt from My God, It’s Full of Stars
Tracy K. Smith
Issue 02
“To feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice.”
Excerpt from Everything is Waiting for You
David Whyte
Issue 02
“And all our anxieties and terrors,
nights of sleeplessness,
griefs,
will appear then as they truly are —
Stumbling, delirious bees in the tea scent of jasmine.”
Excerpt from Jasmine
Jane Hirshfield
Issue 04
Transformation
These are some of the words that inspire us to grow,
today and everyday.
“Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.”
Excerpt from Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
Wendell Berry
Issue 02
“Joy is simple, unassuming.
Red tulips on their green stems.
Early spring vegetables, bright in the pan.
The primary colors of a child’s painting,
the first lessons, all over again.”
Excerpt from Joy
Thomas Centolella
Issue 03
“But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plow.”
Excerpt from The Place Where We Are Right
Yehuda Amichai
Issue 05
Collective Responsibility
These excerpts touch on collective responsibility which, like poetry, emphasises how something small can have a strong impact.
“What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, No.
No, to the rising tides.
Stood for the many mute mouths of the sea, of the land?”
Excerpt from Dead Stars
Ada Limón
Issue 03
“What would it mean to stand on the first
page of the end of despair?”
Excerpt from Dreams Before Waking
Adrienne Rich
Issue 05
Hope
Here are some excerpts from poems that allow us to experience hope, as well as understand it.
“All roads
begin with one
foot in front
of the other.”
Excerpt from Hope
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Issue 02
“There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”
Excerpt from Anthem
Leonard Cohen
Issue 03
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