Vision of a Poetic Policy Group Initiative: Poetry-making and Policy-making (Part G)

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Part G of Poetry-making and Policy-making: Arranging a Marriage between Beauty and the Beast (1993)

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Summary

Suppose there was a critical mix of people with two characteristics, which might or might not overlap in any one person:

• (a) sensitivity to the qualitative implications of the structural dimensions vital to poetry and music;
• (b) sensitivity to the structuring principles vital to management and the policy sciences.

Could such people usefully meet to share insights into the possibility of composing/designing something that might be called a "poetic policy project"?

Such an initiative could be fraught with risks of misunderstanding and conflicting styles of work. There are fundamental differences of language. For example, previous pages indicate, those of poetic sensitivity would be called upon to lean towards the challenge of "design", whilst those with policy skills would have to lean towards the implications of "composition".

What could be the purpose of such a project? Again, for it to be of interest to those of aesthetic sensibilities, there would have to be some aesthetic challenge or inspiration for the individual. For those with policy interests, it would have to have some collective concrete objective. At each stage it would therefore be important to avoid pre- determining or over-determining the nature or outcome of the project. As a creative act, the fruits of such collaboration are as much emergent as pre-determined. They are co- created.

In 1965 Gyorgy Kepes proposed the formation of a closely knit work group of visual artists of a number of disciplines in collaboration with scientists in order to facilitate what he termed "interthinking". This was eventually established within the framework of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Much of the justification in relation to the "visual arts" with respect to "science" could be adapted to justify a similar project in relation to "poetry-making" with respect to "policy-making".