A Five-Beat History of Poetry

The hunting songs of African communities and the court-poems of civilizations in the Nile, Volta, and Niger river valleys are considered some of the earliest origins of poetry, according to historians like Ruth Finnegan.

Ancient Sumerian priests probably used early forms of poetry in their hymns. The erotic verse of Sappho, the Greek poet from the island of Lesvos, survives from around 600 BCE.

This carving, known as the Deluge Stone, is from around 2000 BCE, and relates the epic poem of Gilgamesh, a Mesopotamian hero.

From Gilgamesh to the Epic of Sundiata to Beowulf to Homer and beyond, long stories of wars, journeys, and other heroic endeavours have formed the stuff of poetry for millennia.

Italian poet Dante Alighieri even imagined a fiery descent into the Inferno of hell, a climb up the mountain of Purgatory, then bliss in Paradise. He settled some old scores along the way, placing some of his political enemies in the deep circles of the underworld.

I wandered lonely as a cloud...
Many people were taught about Wordsworth, Keats, Byron and Shelley (the Romantic Poets) at school, but the tradition of 'lyric' poetry - short poems with expressive and often romantic subjects - goes back way further.

The word 'lyric' comes from the stringed instrument which accompanied early Greek verse, the 'lyre'. This one's 3000 years old! Lyric poems are what most people think of when they hear the word 'poetry', and include everything from Shakespeare's sonnets to Sanskrit hymns.

From 1900 onwards, poets in many languages began experimenting with abstract forms and innovative language, responding to a more mechanized modern world and the new wonders (and horrors) that came along with it.

From T.S. Eliot's 1922 The Waste Land up to the Beat Poets of 1950s and 60s America, poetry responded to modernity by seeing how far language could be pushed and distorted to communicate new experiences.

But poetry on the page thrives, too, with small independent presses to suit any taste, as well as a rich global practice of 'visual poetry' which draws on traditions dating back to ancient China. Today you can read, see, hear, and make poetry anywhere, with anyone.