As the Rosetta Stone encoded language, poems encode culture and world view.
Both oral and literary poets are central to the ecology of consciousness, serving as
transpondents of culture itself. As ways of identifying the features of a physical
landscape, language is bound up with place; its loss marks an exile for the poets
who express themselves in that language. And yet, across our fragile planet,
poetry and poetic traditions are increasingly endangered as their vehicles of
communication, the carriers of their art, the words that constitute their lines and
verses, are forgotten or misunderstood. Some estimates indicate that more than
half of the world’s languages will cease to be spoken within the next century.(THE PEOPLE’S POETRY LANGUAGE INITIATIVE:A DECLARATION OF POETIC.RIGHTS AND VALUES)