The Deeper Beats of the Heart: Poetry, Platforms and the Collapse of the Public Sphere

Poet Sarah Clancy and cultural analyst Cornelia Gräbner explore themes that lie at the heart of contemporary poetry as an emancipatory, positioned form of speech; specifically, poems written by Sarah Clancy from within Ireland’s anti-austerity movement, as part of the campaign to legalize abortion and from a positioning within constellations of transatlantic solidarity. Clancy and Gräbner explore the contestatory and propositional traction of poems that are created and spoken from within social movements and campaigns, often as a contribution to community-building; and poems that intentionally take the listener / reader out of their comfort zone, so as to expose and counter acquiescence to the status quo. In both cases, poetry-as-speech acts as a counterforce to the silent and silencing affects of consolation and of shame.