Enterprise Poetry imagines the “possible” enterprises of tomorrow. Or as a great philosopher once said:
“It is not the function of the poet to relate what has happened, but what may happen – what is possible according to the law of probability or necessity. The poet and the historian differ not by writing in verse or in prose… The true difference is that one relates what has happened, the other what may happen.” – – – Aristotle, Poetics (350 BC)
Starting in the Spring of 2007, MIT began awarding two prizes a year (a $700 First Prize and a $500 Second Prize) to graduate and undergraduate students who convincingly imagine a future human enterprise.
This endowed competition is named the Enterprise Poets Prize for Imagining a Future – Submissions can be essays, short stories, videos, plays, or poems, that convincingly imagine a future human enterprise. The word enterprise is used in the broadest possible sense to cover products, processes, companies, industries, forms of government, social movements, artistic forms – any human endeavor. (Continued…)