Documentary poetry
Documentary poems combine primary source material with poetry writing. Myriad sources inspire documentary poetry, including news articles, letters, photographs, dairies, court transcripts, medical records, and a variety of public records. With the increasing availability of online primary sources, writers can access documents brimming with poetic potential.
Poets may arrange lines or phrases from the source texts to create poems, convey their interpretation of the documents through original poetry, or write poems that fall on the continuum between these approaches. Some poets work solely with text; others mix mediums or collaborate with musicians and visual artists.
Although poets choose diverse sources and forms, many share a common purpose: seeking social change by breaking silences and bearing witness to injustice. Philip Metres offers an excellent overview of this pulse within poetry.
If this sort of poetry sounds familiar, you may have heard of it - or its kin - before. This poetic inclination shares traits with objectivist poetry (e.g. William Carlos Williams) and investigative poetry (e.g. Edward Sanders), and is sometimes called docupoetry. In a 2011 essay, poet Joseph Harrington declared it a genre of its own: "creative nonpoetry" (Docupoetry).
Poets may arrange lines or phrases from the source texts to create poems, convey their interpretation of the documents through original poetry, or write poems that fall on the continuum between these approaches. Some poets work solely with text; others mix mediums or collaborate with musicians and visual artists.
Although poets choose diverse sources and forms, many share a common purpose: seeking social change by breaking silences and bearing witness to injustice. Philip Metres offers an excellent overview of this pulse within poetry.
If this sort of poetry sounds familiar, you may have heard of it - or its kin - before. This poetic inclination shares traits with objectivist poetry (e.g. William Carlos Williams) and investigative poetry (e.g. Edward Sanders), and is sometimes called docupoetry. In a 2011 essay, poet Joseph Harrington declared it a genre of its own: "creative nonpoetry" (Docupoetry).
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Docupoetry sampler
Believer (video) - by Natasha Trethewey excerpt from Blood Dazzler - by Patricia Smith Children 3 (audio) - from Holocaust by Charles Reznikoff In a Field Outside the Town - by Gabriel Spera - about Bosnian army's killing of Muslim men in Srebrenica in July 1995 In the Office of Temporary Assistance - by Susan B.A. Somers-Willett (audio version available from transom web site) Hope: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica (photography, music, and poetry) - Kwame Dawes and Joshua Cogan (2008) Pulsamos: LGBTQ Poets Respond to the Pulse Nightclub Shooting - a special issue of Glass Several poems that became part of the collection Seam by Tarfia Faizullah with photographs by Elizabeth Herman Williams/Walker Paradox - by Tyehimba Jess who offers this explanation of the poetics: "I am interested in confronting the past through explorations of call and response and poetic form [and] interested in ways that the reader can explore the poem on their own. . . Finally, I want to have fun, and invite the reader to download, print out, cut out, and change a two dimensional plane into a three dimensional torus, cylinder or mobius that recreates the realities of the speaker's paradox." |
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Contemporary poets
Docupoetry is one of many poetic modes in which these poets write. Amy Benson Brown - The Book of Sarah (incl. several poems available on publisher site) - about abolitionist Sarah Grimke (1792-1873) Nicole Cooley - The Afflicted Girls (incl. Testimony: He or His Apparition) - Salem witch trials (1692) Cornelius Eady - Brutal Imagination (incl. How I Got Born) - imagined speaker for many poems is the black male kidnapper invented by Susan Smith after she killed her two boys in Union, SC (1994) Tyehimba Jess - leadbelly - incl. martha promise receives leadbelly, 1935 - about blues legend Huddie Ledbetter (1888-1949) A. Van Jordan - M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A; Quantum Lyrics - former imagines life of MacNolia Cox, who in 1936 was the first black finalist in the National Spelling Bee; latter from many sources, incl. comic books and Einstein's bio (one from each in Reading Between A and B) Marilyn Nelson - Fortune's Bones, A Wreath for Emmett Till, and several more, such as "Worth." Mark Nowak - Shut Up, Shut Down (incl. ACT/SEVEN); Coal Mine Elementary - about industrial crisis and coal mining respectively Arra Lynn Ross - Seedlip and Sweet Apple (incl. Learn to Sing by Singing) - about Shaker founder Mother Ann Lee (1736-1784) Patricia Smith - Blood Dazzler (incl. Buried and three others published in Poetry) - persona poems about Hurricane Katrina Susan B.A. Somers-Willett - Women of Troy project with photographer Brenda Kenneally - about urban decline and economic struggle in Troy, New York. Poems at VQR Online. Audio versions at transom. Related interview available as well. Natasha Trethewey - Domestic Work (incl. Domestic Work, 1937) - based on photos of African-Americans at work in early 20th c. C.D. Wright - One Big Self project with photographer Deborah Luster - poems based on interviews with inmates in Louisiana prisons. Related essay and recordings available, as well as video about photographer's choice of medium to evoke tin types. Three poems on publisher's site under "read and share a poem from this book." |
Earlier poets
Charles Reznikoff - Testimony; Holocaust Muriel Rukeyser - The Book of the Dead (annotated edition in EMU's Muriel Rukeyser archive) William Carlos Williams - Paterson Interviews and Blog Posts
Against Explanation - post by Tarfia Faizullah on Harriet (2015) Where Physics, Poetry, and Politics Meet - A. Van Jordan talks with Anna Clark of Isak Natasha Trethewey on NPR's Fresh Air Essays and Research Statements
Common-place: The Interactive Journal of Early American Life - most issues of this quarterly open access journal include a Poetic Research section which features poems and related research statements by one or more poets. The journal focuses on American history before 1900 and its publication is sponsored by the American Antiquarian Society and the University of Connecticut. Joseph Harrington - Docupoetry and Archive Desire (2011) Philip Metres - From Reznikoff to Public Enemy: The Poet as Journalist, Historian, Agitator (2007) Ed Sanders - Investigative Poetry (1976) - out-of-print manifesto available from the Woodstock Journal site Split this Rock 2014 - Workshop Materials
Student Source Articles and Samples
Source article by Eszterhas (scroll down page) from The Plain Dealer (1969) - excerpts in Matt Reichert's poem Source articles by Hunt and Russell from The New York Times (2011) - excerpts in Gowri Buddiga's poem
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