Poetry in a World of Distance and Conflict

When we encounter the world’s major conflicts through numbers, analyses, and abstract concepts, the people behind the numbers can disappear. Poetry can offer us something else: a language of closeness, experience, and responsibility—and a way of thinking together across time, place, and perspective. In this panel, three powerful voices from contemporary poetry and translation come together to explore how poems can serve as a counterbalance to distance and abstraction, and how poetry can insist on the human in the midst of a reality shaped by geopolitics and the language of power.