What Impact Can High Culture Make in The Real World?

This piece was originally written for the 2026 Hubert Butler Essay competition. It didn’t place.

Poetry makes nothing happen.

W. H. Auden

What Impact Can High Culture Make in The Real World?

I intend to write this essay in verse,

And apologise for it being worse,

But it makes sense in my mind,

And so will you I hope you’ll find,

To discuss the value of art,

Requires us to part,

With formality and convention,

And embrace whimsy and intention,

For unlike the Sciences in the world we see,

The Arts are born from you and me.

To paint, to write, to tell, to sculpt what never was,

Gives people of all nations a strange kind of buzz,

Yet too often creativity is pushed aside,

By those too simple to abide,

The divine design of play and intuition,

Putting laymen in an uncomfortable position.

What good is such frivolity,

In a world that values quantity over quality?

What good is such a niche,

In a world that expects mainstream reach?

What good is such incongruity,

In a world that refuses it gratuity?

The Arts were never to appease,

Those who value only sales and fees,

Rather it was made to strengthen empathy,

Among those who call themselves “Humanity.”

In case you don’t notice,

In case you don’t care,

I’ll be switching up the tempo,

To keep you aware.

Some sections will follow,

An A/B/A/B scheme,

Making it easy to swallow;

See what I mean?

Some start and end as they come.

Another will be opposite an other.

I’ll alliterate to illustrate and demonstrate as to not proliferate what may obfuscate.

This is to show artistic invention,

The wonders of creativity,

Benefits to society,

But mostly it’s for your attention.

The Arts have always been around,

Filling our world with sights and sound,

Reaching from sky to ground,

With a history deep and profound.

In the abyss of caves,

There are stories on the rocks,

Telling of hunters and gatherers,

Of leaders and slaves.

Paintings depict prehistoric man,

And the primitive tools they use,

To farm, hunt, survive,

As much record as daily plan.

Even in the early stone age,

We knew the value of art,

To instruct, track, shape our world,

Eons before the printed page.

And in these caves by firelight,

We told each other stories,

Of things that have never been,

But kept us safe through the night.

Even in these harsh times,

Performers were honoured,

As shamans, druids, oracles,

Weaving stories, pictures, and rhymes.

From the realm of primordial imagination,

Came history and mythology,

Came religion and meaning,

Came the bedrock of civilisation.

In a young world beyond our comprehension,

Full of beasts and savages,

We found salvation in make-believe,

Our greatest invention.

The Arts are found throughout our history,

Because they were how we learn,

Passed orally from master to page in turn,

Telling of battles, kingdoms, and victory.

It is murals and music that create nations,

Poems and photos that capture movements,

Satire and songs that cause improvements,

Tomes and theatre that act as commemorations.

Yes; facts matter of course,

Only a politician could deny,

But the truth is easily twisted into a lie,

Only art can come from the truest source.

People, people, people!

Not the state or “Big Brother!”

Not one doctrine or another!

Nor from the church steeple!

The Blues came from emancipation,

Drag came from the oppressed,

Grunge came from the depressed,

“Chick Lit” from women’s liberation.

History is written by the winners,

But recited by the artists,

Beatniks, hippies, romantics, Marxists;

The scripture of the past is humbled by sinners.

Creatives can reach out to the future,

And tell us a truth we’ve never heard,

In marble, in paint, in film, or written word,

Healing trauma like a temporal suture.

The past is full of friends,

Bequeathing hard-earned wisdom,

Honest, unafraid, and winsome,

The Arts is the gift it sends.

So much talk yet we still don’t know,

Where the Arts come from or go.

What lessons can they show?

That we reap what we sow?

How Wordsworth’s clouds flow?

How Yeats’ bees buzz to and fro’?

How the blue curtains still billow?

How the mockingbird crow?

No matter what the Arts have in tow,

The mystery continues to grow.

But what is it?

What makes art a part of our hearts from the start and not just a shart?

Any child, wild or mild, can draw and drawl, caw and crawl, fight, bite, and shite art!

There’s nothing magic in what’s just tragic.

The only thing I see sizzling is the hissing from the amount of pissing and jizzing from the point I’m missing. What am I missing?

I don’t understand what I don’t see planned,

I don’t get the demand,

Of this of that jazz band,

So widely panned,

In this postmodern land;

It seems art and hype go hand in hand!

In!

Ten!

Shun!

Nality!

Intentionality!

Intentionality is the reality of what seems banality, sometimes even depravity, but is in actuality the honed punctuality of an artistic personality becoming factuality.

It is the promise made that every shade is to aid in the attention paid to every pigment laid (peach, cyan, or jade), that will bathe the work with the tricks of the trade to persuade our emotions that stayed to witness the hopes another human prayed.

It is a promise worth your attention, worth your retention, worth invention, devoid of pretension, struggled against prevention, against censorship detention, not scared of causing contention, of provoking tension, filled, filled to the overflowing brim with artistic intention.

It’s not TikTok, sapping away at your clock.

It’s not AI Slop, giving nothing but another flop.

It’s not mental fast food, presenting something crude.

It is not content with being content.

Art that is wept is a promise kept.

Art that is marred is avant-garde.

Art that is quare is one that can dare.

Art that is opaque is art for art’s sake.

Art that intends is art that never pretends.

It should always be noted of course,

The Arts serve as a medium for discourse,

Able to make palatable the taboo,

Hiding the risqué in plain sight,

Bringing dark secrets to light.

It gives a voice to those in need,

Otherwise silenced by politics and creed,

Those wishing to explore the new,

Those wishing to prove they were here;

The migrant, the minority, the feminine, the queer.

It’s easy for people to get lost in all the numbers,

Costs, dates, statistics; all fact encumbers,

But it’s easy to still overlook,

That life is so messy and subjective,

Expression is more necessity than elective.

Literature can express repressed desires,

Allegory can spare you stonings and pyres,

Subtlety can heighten a children’s book,

Metaphor can speak any language,

Self-expression can exorcise anguish.

Creative acts, whether enjoyed or pursued,

Feed a longing ignored and subdued,

Echoing the message “You are not alone,”

“Comforting the disturbed”, Oscar Wilde said,

Showing us the path our forebearers tread.

To express yourself is to unchain the soul,

To refuse conformity to take its toll,

To create allows you to atone,

To witness another’s act is to find kin,

To feel awe is to let your life finally begin.

But you will also find a practicality,

To the uses of art in our reality,

Ones surpassing mere functionality,

Preserving facts in actuality.

When scholars are at a loss,

For which past path they should cross,

They don’t leave it to a coin toss,

They turn to paintings of varnish and gloss.

We know the Greeks by their plays,

We know the Qin by their brush sways,

We know the Celts by stories of the fays,

We know the Normans by their tapestry frays.

Anthropology relies on culture to understand,

How movements and moments past command,

The ideas that still govern our land,

From rocky peaks to seashore sand.

We cannot comprehend the abstract,

We must narrativize to extract,

Meaning that goes beyond mere fact;

It’s why we write, paint, film, and act.

What will they find when they study our times?

Will they be forgiving of our flaws and crimes?

What will they learn from our songs and rhymes?

In retrospection, it is always art that primes.

When history is censored by those in power,

It’s the Arts that come in our darkest hour,

To reveal the truth like a blooming flower,

Of the people and lives they tried to scour.

People; it’s always people in the end,

Whether family or stranger; they’re all friend.

That is the lesson we need to learn.

The virtue all art wants to earn.

Humanity and art are more than pure vanity;

Its empathy is the cure for its apathy.

Tragedy personally can be felt widely by society,

When one expresses themselves honestly and then,

Just a bit, we understand another’s just wit.

With wit? Not a phone? Not a computer? Not even a Fitbit?

That’s it! Empathy; never fail, never fall, never quit.

Creating a safe space where we find ourselves satiating,

Touching another soul with emotion so clutching,

Lasting and nourishing souls more than prayers and fasting,

Reminding us all we share the same existential binding.

Take any idol for argument’s sake.

Da Vinci, Goya, Pollock, Beksinski.

Ronnie Drew, Michael Jackson, Daft Punk, Motley Crue.

W. B. Yeats, R. L. Stine, C. S. Lewis, H. E. Bates.

Seeing another’s world expands our senses of being,

Giving permission to experience another way of living.

Travel broadens the mind, but art lets it unravel,

Sanitising the other we’re pushed into despising,

Only to find another just as lonely,

Reflecting like a mirror another human introspecting.

Demolished are barriers and obfuscations abolished;

Race, nation, and creed go without a trace.

How others see is just as important now,

Because humanity is the same as it ever was;

Dire to come together and sit by the fire,

Sharing stories and capable of caring.

The Arts have always come from nothing,

As much from as for those with the least.

Nomad troupes, starving artists, musicians on the dole,

It’s true from west to east.

Yet something strange is happening,

The Arts are under attack,

For being too this, too that, too they-them;

Too gay, too fem, too niche, too black.

With the Arts constantly being cut,

In both schools and government grants,

Is it any wonder tensions grow,

Fuelling bigotry, arson, and rants?

Yet those leading the charge,

Have ulterior motives of their own,

Of controlling the very culture,

They so adamantly bemoan.

The irony of ironies about the Arts,

And gatekeepers who don’t wish for parts,

Of the public to have their say,

Is the elite would have us throw away,

What they would keep for their own,

For them, their kids, their kin alone.

They’re a class of people of a different kind,

Who would leave you far behind,

In the most basic of human need,

To satisfy their avarice greed.

For though they wish us to give up the Arts,

It has a special place in their selfish hearts.

They go to opera, they go to a play,

They go to galleries, they go out of their way,

To not depend on tech and AI,

To soothe their existential cry.

A world where only power can be expressed,

Is a world destined to be repressed.

They sell us a future they have built,

Then rob our past without guilt.

For they know the soul must be nourished,

And only in the Arts can life fully flourish.

But they can never naturally share,

What takes effort and intentional care.

They can’t see worth in what is free,

Only in what has a fee.

They can never allow the Arts for all,

They must keep it behind a paywall.

Speak to anyone who creates,

Or enjoyer for that matter,

And they will struggle to describe,

What it is that makes them fixate.

It is an innate joy and toll,

Yet more often the latter,

A constant search for your tribe,

So human it must be the soul.

When I speak of a soul,

I don’t speak of religion,

Rather the part of a whole,

Human free from division.

It’s the spirit at the core,

Of what it means to live;

The reason for,

The reason we give,

To such random chance,

To be in the first place,

To join the cosmic dance,

And stare Death in the face.

Art transcends time,

Country, culture, and creed,

Capturing humanity’s prime,

Comforting those in need.

It is the closest thing to God,

Without dogmatic zeal,

As down to Earth as sod,

Yet making the spiritual real.

To create is to immortalise the self,

To outlive the material body,

Every painting on a wall, every book on a shelf,

Is a ritual beyond simple hobby.

Art only exists on a spiritual level,

A creation of the mind,

As fictitious as Odin, Ra, or the Devil,

Yet as influential upon mankind.

It cannot be quantified,

Nor felt by non-believers.

It cannot be commodified,

Earnestly by deceivers.

It cannot die in repression,

Nor easily replicated.

It cannot support regression,

Nor be debated.

To create is to echo The Sublime,

To birth a universe within,

To capture a moment in time,

To absolve the creator from sin.

Just because it can’t be seen,

Just because it can’t be measured,

Doesn’t in any sense mean,

It shouldn’t still be treasured.

In a world so inhumane,

So full of hate and pain,

We lean so much on technology,

We owe each other an apology.

We have become such misanthropes,

That we willingly surrender our hopes,

To dogma, the mob, and AI,

So eagerly without asking “Why?”

It is easier to just be numb,

To let our minds go deaf and dumb.

But it doesn’t have to be this way,

We can conceptualise what we want to say,

We can speak in symbols to one another,

And finally connect with the other.

“Every child is an artist” Picasso once said,

And we can be again before we’re dead.

We can choose to see the soul in a work,

And finally appreciate our human quirk.

The Arts are impossible to define,

Just as humans are by design,

But that’s no reason to undermine,

How beautiful we all are when we shine.

A human can’t be measured,

No matter how hard we try.

A human can’t be replicated,

Especially not by AI.

To create anything,

Is to bravely declare,

“I made this for you,

To show I care.”

It is an act with no profit,

No point, no reason.

And sometimes it can offend,

And be considered treason.

But to create is to make,

Something good out of strife,

To make things easier,

For everyone in this life.

In a way it has no impact,

Upon the world that is real,

Except for the world within all,

The one we can’t help but feel.

Photo by Mona Eendra on Unsplash