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00:00 I am Pragya and I bring to you excerpts from the ear-opener issue of Outlook titled Poetry as Evidence.

00:07 Poetry must be brought before general public. Poetry offers that scope that we get affected and we feel.

00:14 Poetry expands the scope of storytelling. It is evidence of others' lives, of our times.

00:21 We remain grateful to Amar Kanwar who worked with us and edited this issue,

00:25 and to everyone who gave us their poems and images, to the reporters who gathered the poems,

00:31 to the designers and researchers who made it all possible.

00:35 In the introduction to the ear-opener issue, guest editor Amar Kanwar writes,

00:40 "Poetry as evidence. In an AI-controlled, digitally manipulated, and market-choreographed landscape of ideas,

00:49 desires and feelings, who have I become now? Do I think what I think? Or perhaps it's not me anymore?

00:57 How to understand my inner self and its relationship with the outside world?

01:03 How to understand the day's events, the news of the city, the region, or of nations?

01:09 How to relate to the multiple disappearances of people, communities, languages, natural systems, ways of living and being?

01:18 Could the poet's mind and words help us come together and find other ways of thinking,

01:24 relocating senses that have become attenuated in order to comprehend again?

01:30 Could we subvert the mind game and reimagine the news?

01:34 What if we could imagine the morning newspaper written and conceived by poets,

01:40 rather than corporations, governments, political parties, and ideological projects?"

01:46 For the January 2024 special issue, I offered three sets of propositions to Outlook's team of researchers and reporters.

01:55 This issue consists of selections of poetry that respond to these propositions.

02:01 First, imagine the simultaneous viewing of multiple time.

02:06 Of obvious time, hyper-time, orphaned time.

02:10 Time that unexpectedly shoot off from beneath your feet and races away.

02:16 Time parallel and coexisting in two geographical memories.

02:21 One, sinking roots, the other, a smoke wisp attached to and forever trailing a body.

02:28 Imagine time that is filled with as many silences as with words.

02:34 Imagine the slow gathering together of time.

02:38 Moment by moment, evidence by evidence.

02:42 Imagine the formal presentation of poetry as evidence in a future war crimes tribunal.

02:48 Second, imagine the morning newspaper, headlines and couplets, black and white, but in verse.

02:55 Imagine that constellation of words, truth as told by the stars and birds,

03:01 translated by bread and transcribed by daughters.

03:06 Imagine the clash of silences, the sting and honey of the bee and the lamenting obituary.

03:13 Imagine night as day and day as night, the moon as witness and the sun a doctor.

03:20 Nurses as editors, poets as reporters and the village balladeer, the week's ombudsman.

03:28 Imagine traitors as lovers, outlaws as fathers and renegades as poets.

03:35 Imagine talking curtains and storytellers' tiffin boxes.

03:40 Imagine column becoming cups and rows becoming dogs.

03:44 Mountain dogs, river dogs, factory dogs, gutter dogs, tree dogs and kitchen sink dogs.

03:51 Imagine the color of that grey.

03:53 Imagine the formal presentation of poetry as news of the day.

03:58 Third, understanding how change takes place allows us to foresee, assess and even predict.

04:05 Can poetry help us understand the passage of time?

04:10 And if that were possible, even for one unique moment, could we then catch a glimpse of the future?

04:18 For this and more, read the year opener issue of Outlook.

#OutlookMagazine | Poetry as evidence

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