The power of poetry ⏲️ 6 Minute English

Hello, this is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I'm Neil. And I'm Pippa. In this episode we're discussing poetry. For some, poetry is what you study at school, then

forget, while for others it becomes an important part of their life. Have you ever read or written any poetry, Neil? Well, I haven't written any poetry since I was at school.

I would love to read more poetry, but I just don't get it, really. I find it difficult to understand. A good place to hear poetry is an open mic night, a live event where anyone is allowed to stand

up on stage to sing or recite poems. Here, BBC reporter Maria recites her open mic poem about a friend who suffered a stroke, for BBC World Service programme People Fixing the World. This first poem, I wrote it about a friend who

I love dearly. It's called Stroke. You're awake And trying to grasp who it is. I pull my mask past my lips and you study my face, Eyes wide.

I've enough stuff to tell you, I say, Sinking into a chair. I stare. Sometimes if you go to an open mic night, people can really touch your soul with what they're saying.

And even if you're having a bad day, life can feel so much better after going to an open mic night. For Maria, poetry has the power to heal emotions and touch your soul, meaning to affect you deeply on an

emotional or spiritual level. In this episode, we'll hear more about the positive power of poetry and, as usual, we'll learn some useful new words and phrases. And remember, you'll find all the vocabulary, plus a quiz

and worksheet on our website, bbclearningenglish.com. But first, I have a question for you, Pippa. Just now you used the phrase 'the positive power of poetry', repeating the same initial 'p' sound across a string of words.

Doing this is a common feature of poetry, but what's it called? Is it: a) assonance, b) alliteration, or c) simile? Hmm. Finally, my English degree might come in handy!

And I'm going to say b) alliteration. Well, we'll find out at the end, and I hope you don't get embarrassed, Pippa! Now, poetry helped Maria overcome sadness, but could its power to heal work in other areas too?

Hot Poets is a group helping people understand the science behind global issues like climate change. They go to meetings like the UN Climate Conference and listen to scientific papers being presented. Then they write a poem about it all and perform

that back to the audience. Here's Hot Poet Liv Torc, reciting her poem to BBC World Service's People Fixing the World. It starts with an adventure at sea, A big blue murder mystery, where the killer is not the whale But

an epic humanity fail Of overfishing and polluting at unimaginable scale. Liv's poem is based on a study into biodiversity. It's a complex research project that many find hard to understand.

Here, Liv discusses this with Myra Anubi for BBC World Service programme People Fixing the World: And Liv, I mean, so what you've identified is that there is an issue around the communication of science. Yes, a lot of this jargon is really hard to

understand, or a lot of the science is quite impenetrable to normal people, so it's instantly a turn-off. Science uses lots of jargon – specialist or technical vocabulary which is quite different from everyday language. For example, a scientist might use the word precipitation, while