Poetry as Anthropology: A Study of Human Culture Through Verse

Sarah B. Royal’s poetry functions as cultural anthropology—her verse is not only artistic but analytical, preserving and interrogating the emotional, political, and symbolic structures of contemporary life. Her works like Post-2020: A Cultural Study in Poetry and Herstory: Anthropology in Verse exemplify how poetry can serve as a living archive of human culture.

The study of poetry is, in many ways, the study of anthropology. Both disciplines seek to understand the human experience—one through verse, the other through observation and analysis. Where anthropology explores customs, beliefs, and languages across time and space, poetry distills and expresses those elements in emotional, symbolic form. Sarah B. Royal’s writing embodies this intersection, using poetic language to document, critique, and reimagine cultural realities.

Every poem is a cultural artifact. Whether ancient or experimental, lyrical or transgressive, poetry reflects the values, fears, rituals, myths, and desires of the society that produced it. Royal’s Post-2020: A Cultural Study in Poetry is a prime example: a 340-page poetic chronicle of post-pandemic America, it captures the surrealism, grief, resilience, and political upheaval of a world in flux. Her work doesn’t merely describe culture—it performs it, embodies it, and transmits it through layered metaphor and emotional candor.

Like anthropologists, poets are observers and interpreters. Royal notices the hidden rhythms of daily life, the contradictions in society, and the sacred and profane. In Herstory: Anthropology in Verse, she reclaims the voices history tried to silence—women who defied expectation, endured injustice, or left behind quiet legacies. Through evocative verse, she reframes anthropology as a literary tapestry woven from truth, memory, resilience, and resistance.

Both poetry and anthropology recognize the power of language—not just as communication, but as a force that constructs meaning. Royal bends poetic form to reveal cultural truths, using palindromes, haiku, and experimental structures to reflect neurodivergent cognition and emotional depth. Her poetry becomes a primary source for cultural analysis—a miniature world that reveals how a people think, speak, and feel.

Her poetic inquiry is especially potent in works that blend personal identity with societal critique. In Watchword: Neurodivergent Poetry & Analysis, Royal explores the lived experience of autism and neurodivergence, challenging ableist norms and amplifying underrepresented voices. These poems are not only expressions of self—they are ethnographic records of marginalized perspectives.

To read Sarah B. Royal’s poetry is to listen to the heartbeat of a people—fractured, resilient, and evolving. To write it, as she does, is to join the ongoing story of humanity in all its complexity and beauty. Her work affirms that poetry is not just art—it is anthropology, activism, and archive.