Chapter 21: Poetry At the End of Democracy: Envisioning Democracy Through Poetry

Democracies do not last forever. This might be a terrifying statement. But it is a prospect that citizens in a democracy must confront. The purpose of this chapter is to show how professors and students can use poetry to strengthen their current democracies and imagine new political and social arrangements when those democracies end. In this chapter, I examine some relevant theories of democracy and citizenship, as well arts-based research and poetic inquiry. I ground the analysis in John Dewey’s notion of creative democracy. Most importantly, this chapter contains actual professor and student-created poetry which illustrates how democracy and more generally, a robust social life, can be reimagined.