ART IS CHANGE: Strategies & Skills for Activist Artists & Cultural Organizers
Sep 30, 2026 · 33 min · 9 segments
## Where do poetry and democracy intersect? In part two of our conversation with Dayton poet laureate, educator, activist, culture keeper, and Kettering Foundation Democracy and the Arts resident…
As you know, the Kettering Foundation sees democracy as a system that people need to practice together.
And my question to you is, as a poet, What is the link between the poetic practice and the democratic practice? How do they feed each other, particularly in the world that we're navigating these days?
First and foremost, I would say the question makes me think of how the work is just never done.
And I think in advocacy, the thing that makes it different for me is that we're looking for fairness and equality and looking to see how the systems and those in charge of those systems are working to benefit the will of the common man.
And how are we choosing to live together in that work? And I see pretty much a poem as a way to express a feeling, a thought, a belief, or a desire.
How am I taking imagination, which I think is what the Constitution is, what a Bill of Rights feels imagined sometimes.
when it's not being utilized and practiced in a way that it needs to be on the ground, it feels to me that poetry and democracy shares the same spirit.
The spirit of I'm going to take this snapshot in this moment in time, because that's what you are most times, responding to A moment, a scene, a picture.
And noticing that so deeply that you leave something for others to grapple with, to confront, and to make better.
And it seems that is the work of what we're doing with democracy over and over again.
What is next? And for the poem, for me, I feel embodying what the poem is many days.
What is next? Am I prepared? And am I leaving this space better than I found it?
As you know, the Kettering Foundation sees democracy as a system that people need to practice together.
And my question to you is, as a poet, What is the link between the poetic practice and the democratic practice? How do they feed each other, particularly in the world that we're navigating these days?
First and foremost, I would say the question makes me think of how the work is just never done.
And I think in advocacy, the thing that makes it different for me is that we're looking for fairness and equality and looking to see how the systems and those in charge of those systems are working to benefit the will of the common man.
And how are we choosing to live together in that work? And I see pretty much a poem as a way to express a feeling, a thought, a belief, or a desire.
How am I taking imagination, which I think is what the Constitution is, what a Bill of Rights feels imagined sometimes.
when it's not being utilized and practiced in a way that it needs to be on the ground, it feels to me that poetry and democracy shares the same spirit.
The spirit of I'm going to take this snapshot in this moment in time, because that's what you are most times, responding to A moment, a scene, a picture.
And noticing that so deeply that you leave something for others to grapple with, to confront, and to make better.
And it seems that is the work of what we're doing with democracy over and over again.
What is next? And for the poem, for me, I feel embodying what the poem is many days.
What is next? Am I prepared? And am I leaving this space better than I found it?
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