Poetry Makes Nothing Happen

Victoria Cattoni, our featured artist shared an excerpt. A big shame if kept only to ourselves.

Poetry makes nothing happen? In the immediate sense and in the world of politics, it rarely does, if ever – and even when it does, what “happens” is an internal matter, a happening in the heart and soul, the process being so subtle and slow to the point of being almost unperceivable or untranslatable into immediate action. Therein lies the mystery of poetry, of art. And its ultimate worth and justification as well as its uselessness in the quantitative practical sense – the kind of sense valued by bureaucratic moralists, ideologues and politicians.

Salleh Ben Joned from the essay
'Poetry Makes Nothing Happen' in "Nothing is Sacred",
Maya Press Sdn. Bhd.,
2003, Selangor Darul Ehsan ( Malaysia ), pp.81-82