'Poetry needs real outcomes': John Kinsella responds to Tom Bristow's questions on place

Abstract: Let us conceive of the grassroots community becoming the intermediate micro-social space between the private and the public, macro-social spaces. What are the barriers to constructing sustainable communities, in your experience, and how does your place-based poetry address or represent the private-public dynamic? What happens when we take these questions to the more-than-human world? 

I believe in real outcomes. Poetry needs real outcomes. Activist poetry certainly needs real outcomes. Place is layered with real outcomes. Sustainable communities are those that are self-aware on the level of the individual and in terms of consensus. Awareness comes about through access to knowledge and data, but also through listening to the 'environment' itself. Data only tell us what is already evident. Communities with a 'spiritual' sensitivity to the place they occupy are inevitably aware of its needs, vulnerabilities, and characteristics of 'intactness'. A dialogue of respect allows for longevity.