Auden said poetry makes nothing happen. But I wonder if the opposite could be true. It could make something happen.

Duffy’s remark is a direct engagement with W. H. Auden’s famously ambivalent line “poetry makes nothing happen,” often read as a sober admission that poems do not directly alter political events. By invoking Auden and then reversing his conclusion, Duffy frames poetry as a potential agent rather than a passive witness: language can shift perception, enlarge empathy, and change what readers believe is possible. Her phrasing (“I wonder… It could…”) keeps the claim provisional, suggesting a poet’s faith tested against history. The significance lies in defending poetry’s public value—its capacity to catalyze inner change that may, indirectly or cumulatively, become social change.