Anthropoetry
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Table of contents
The Meaning Behind Anthropoetry
The Four Ways of Understanding Humanity
Why Anthropology Poetry Matters in Understanding Human Nature
Anthropoetry as a Spiritual Language
Is Anthropoetry a Literary Movement?
Experience Anthropoetry through Books
What is Anthropoetry? It is a melding of the terms Anthropology and Poetry.
Anthropology means, "the study of humans", and poetry is a powerful tool we can use to help us understand humanity. Already, there are three branches of anthropology: archaeology, linguistics and cultural. Archaeology reveals only what physically remains from the people of the past. Linguistics reveal the migration of thought. Cultural anthropology reveals how human societies organize themselves. Each of these branches allow us to paint a clearer picture of what it means to be human, but they are incapable of illuminating the most important part of being a human: our spirit. This is where Anthropoetry comes in. The use of poetry is to reveal the human spirit.
The spirit is an endless and infinite mystery which all humans are connected to. There is an invisible power-line that reaches into each of us from that same endless and infinite source of energy. That is our connection to the spiritual. Spirit gives us energy, like a generator. When we are curious, when we are awestruck, when we are inspired, we receive a surge of energy that compels us to create. Art is the byproduct of this surge of energy we receive when we momentarily conceive the unknown. The purpose of the art itself is to remind humanity of that unseen force which powers us. Art in itself, even great art, can only be a vastly imperfect representation of spirit. It would be impossible to represent something infinite with something finite. So instead art contains within it only a clue to one aspect of that spirit. Your role as a viewer of art is to unwrap that imperfect package and unveil that clue to the spirit held within it. Some art, bad art, is a deception. It is a package with no clue inside. If it gives you no energy, then there is no clue. When you do find a clue inside a piece of art, put it in your pocket and go out looking for more art to find more clues. Once you have gathered enough clues throughout your life, you can begin to lay them all out on a table. Then you can piece them together and find connections between them. Pretty soon you will have a rudimentary sketch of the spiritual. You are on your way to developing your intuition.
There are two realms of consciousness which people constantly alternate between: Linear and Mythological. Linear consciousness is instructional, mechanical and superficial. It is like a story told only through the events, chronologically. Mythological consciousness is intuitive, impressionistic, and limitless. This is like a story with no beginning or end, and with an emphasis on ideas and emotions. All humans travel between these two realms of consciousness when their lives require them to. Most problems in life need to be solved using both mythological and linear thinking. Sometimes a person will refuse to leave a realm of consciousness they've become too comfortable in. Their intransigence will lead them to a life of struggle. They will need to construct fantasies around them which allow them to deny their need to move. This will limit their perspective and not allow them to grow, and the fantasies require immense amounts of mental exertion to maintain. Moving is hard, but at a certain point not moving will be harder and eventually the fantasies will collapse. This applies collectively to humankind as well, but in much longer cycles. I believe we are leaving a time dominated by linear consciousness. We have answered many important questions that require linear thinking, but there are now questions which vex us that mythological thinking is better equipped to answer. To prepare for this consciousness shift, and avoid a mental collapse, simply develop your intuition. And to do this, you will learn a new language--a universal language, a spiritual language--a language I call Anthropoetry.
-John Elkin
The Meaning Behind Anthropoetry
Anthropoetry is a philosophy that brings together the analytical study of humanity, and the intuitive power of poetry. The word in and of itself is a combination of two terms - anthropology, the study of humankind - and poetry, one of humanity's oldest forms of creative expression. Together, they represent two complementary ways of exploring what it actually means to be human, and what we are at our very core of being.
Traditional anthropology helps us to understand people, culture and our history through evidence. It examines our history, our languages, our cultures, our physical remains - all to build a picture of how societies have evolved over time. By contract, poetry explores what cannot easily be measured - our emotions, our imagination, our intuition, and our spiritual life. It is, almost by definition, intangible and incorporeal.
Anthropoetry as a concept proposes that understanding humanity requires both perspectives. Facts can explain how people lived, but poetry can help us understand how they dreamed, loved, feared, created, and searched for meaning. It is not intended to replace anthropology, but rather to place a new lens on our understanding of it - and complement it by exploring the inner landscape of human experience.
Rather than viewing poetry as simply an artistic discipline, anthropoetry treats it as a means of discovering truths about ourselves that exist beyond data, chronology, and observation. It invites readers to consider that the human spirit is just as worthy of exploration as the human past itself.
The Four Ways of Understanding Humanity
Humanity can be perceived, examined and understood through a multitude of different lenses. However, anthropology has traditionally been divided into three major branches, each offering valuable insights into who we are. Anthropoetry introduces a fourth perspective, one that focuses not on the external evidence of humanity, but on its inner life.
Archaeology
Archaeology studies the physical traces left behind by past civilisations. From ancient tools and monuments through to everyday objects, archaeology reconstructs the lives of people who came before us. It reveals where we lived, how we survived, and how societies changed over time.
Linguistics
Language carries far more meaning than just the words themselves. Linguistics explores how languages develop, spread, and evolve. This reveals the migration of ideas, beliefs, and cultures across generations and distance. Through language and linguistics, we can trace not only communication but the evolution of human thought and expression.
Cultural Anthropology
Cultural anthropology examines how societies organise themselves, from traditions and rituals to beliefs, customs, and social structures. It helps us explain why different communities understand the world in different ways, while revealing the shared patterns across them that unite humanity.
Anthropoetry
Anthropoetry builds upon these foundations by turning inward. Rather than studying artifacts, languages, or social systems that humans create, it explores the experiences that inspire those creations in the first place.
While there are wider lenses available, such as artistic expression and creation itself, exploring through poetry gives a deeper depth and meaning, along with a narrower focus to surface the human experience. Through poetry, metaphor, symbolism, and imagination, Anthropoetry seeks to uncover the emotional and spiritual dimensions of human life. It asks questions that archaeology cannot excavate, linguistics cannot translate, and cultural anthropology cannot fully observe. What does wonder feel like? How do we experience grief, beauty, transcendence, or awe? What connects people across cultures, across languages, across generations?
Seen together, these four perspectives offer a more complete understanding of humanity. The first three help explain how humans exist in the world, while anthropoetry explores what it feels like to be human within it.
Why Anthropology Poetry Matters in Understanding Human Nature
Poetry has always occupied a unique place in human culture. Across every civilisation and throughout history, people have used verse to express experiences that ordinary language struggles to capture.
Unlike scientific or historical writing, poetry does not simply communicate information. It communicates feeling - through imagery, rhythm, symbolism, and metaphor. Poetry allows readers to engage with ideas emotionally as well as intellectually, and to seek deeper meanings and metaphorical abstractions for themselves.
This makes poetry uniquely suited to exploring the human condition. Themes such as love, loss, identity, hope, mortality, memory, and belonging are often experienced more deeply through poetic expression than through explanation alone. A poem can reveal emotional truths that facts along cannot convey, and poetry as an expressive allows us to hold a mirror to humanity, and to ourselves - inspiring a more innate connection with the medium.
From the perspective of anthropoetry, poetry becomes more than literature. It becomes a way of recognising aspects of ourselves that might otherwise remain hidden. Every poem offers an opportunity to see familiar experiences from a different perspective, encouraging reflection, empathy, and intuition.
It is for this reason that poetry has, across cultures, endured and endured for thousands of years. Although languages might change, and societies might evolve, the emotions that shape human life remain remarkably constant. Because of this, poetry continues to remind us of the shared experiences that connect us across time.
Anthropoetry as a Spiritual Language
One of the central ideas behind anthropoetry is that poetry can function as a universal spiritual language. This does not refer to religion or doctrine, but to the shared human capacity for wonder, imagination, creativity, and intuition.
Throughout all of history, artists, writers, and poets have attempted to express experiences that resist and defy straightforward explanation. Moments of profound beauty, of inspiration, grief, or transcendence often feel larger than language itself - than words may possibly be able to convey. Poetry, however, approaches these experiences through symbol, metaphor, and suggestion - rather than literal description.
Anthropoetry proposes that great works of art contain clues to these deeper dimensions of human experience. Each poem offers a fragment of insight into the mysteries that unite humanity, inviting readers to engage actively with its meaning, rather than to passively consume it.
In this sense, reading poetry becomes an act of exploration. Every interpretation contributes another piece to a much larger picture, like a puzzle - gradually expanding our understanding of both ourselves, and of the world around us. Rather than delivering fixed and absolute answers, anthropoetry encourages continual curiosity, reflection, and discovery.
It is through this ongoing dialogue between poet, poem, and reader that poetry then becomes a language capable of expressing aspects of the human spirit which ordinary language often leaves unsaid.
Is Anthropoetry a Literary Movement?
Anthropoetry is best understood as a philosophical and creative framework rather than an established literary movement. While literary movements like Romanticism, Modernmism and Surrealism are recognised and established historical schools of thought with multiple writers and shared characteristics, anthropoetry represents a distinct approach to understanding humanity through poetry.
Anthropoetry brings together ideas from anthropology, philosophy, spirituality, and literature to explore the relationship between poetric expression and the human experience. Rather than defining a particular style of writing, it offers a way of reading, interpreting and creating poetry that seeks to illuminate the inner dimensions of human life.
As the concept develops, anthropoetry invites readers, writers, artists and thinkers to participate in an ongoing conversation about what poetry can reveal about humanity. It encourages the view that understanding people requires not only historical evidence and scientific observation, but also imagination, symbolism, emotion, and intuition.
Whether considered a philosophy, a creative practice, or an emerging literary idea, anthropoetry offers a unique and fresh perspective on one of humanity's oldest questions: what does it truly mean to be human?
Experience Anthropoetry through Books
While Anthropoetry offers a framework for understanding humanity through poetry, its ideas are ultimately intended to be experienced rather than simply explained. John Elkin's Cairn City Cairn Ville is an anthropoetry book which brings many of these themes together through poetic language, symbolism, and reflection, inviting readers to engage with questions of identity, memory, spirituality, and the search for meaning.
Readers interested in Anthropoetry can explore these concepts in practice through the book, experiencing how poetry becomes not only an artistic form but also a way of understanding ourselves and the world around us.
