Poetic Imagination in Systems Change

Sor Juana was a major poet, playwright, and creative thinker who used poetry not as decoration but as a primary mode of knowledge-making and persuasion. She crafted complex arguments through verse, accessible to broader audiences than scholastic Latin treatises. This points to climate justice's need for imaginative, creative expression alongside data and policy. Poetry, narrative, visual art, and music move people toward change in ways statistics alone cannot. They envision different possibilities—ways of living in right relationship with Earth and each other. Climate crisis partly stems from imaginative failure: we cannot envision economic systems beyond extraction, communities beyond domination. Artists, storytellers, and creative thinkers therefore have essential roles in climate work—not supplementary but central. Sor Juana's example shows that knowledge and beauty are not opposed; imagination is intellectual work. Climate solutions require both rigorous analysis and the creative capacity to imagine and inspire alternatives. Poetry becomes a technology of transformation.