Poets Guild

The Poets' Guild, officially the Poets' and Calligraphers' Guild, is the Sirdabi Caliphate's official association for these creative professions. It is an old and honorable institution, having existed in some form since the very earliest days of the caliphate. Originally only the Poets' Guild, it later came to encompass calligraphers as well with the rise of this art in the first century N.D. Although a single individual within the guild may exhibit skill in both poetics and the art of representing works in script, there is a cultural divide between the two which tends towards factionalism within the guild.

The Poets' Guild has great cultural cachet throughout the caliphate and its most talented members are known and generally admired everywhere, by rich and poor alike. Since poverty and low social standing are no barrier to admission into the guild, there are no few dreamers among the poor who entertain visions of rising to fame and fortune by demonstrating a gift for poetry. Women, too -- particularly Sirdabi women -- see the tantalizing chance of achieving a rare freedom and independence within the guild, opening up far wider realms of experience and influence than most can presently hope for. Besides the fame and appreciation derived from its place in popular culture, the guild and its members are also held a little in awe due to the widely held belief that all poets and calligraphers are capable of feats of magic, though in truth only perhaps half of all guild members are well skilled in magic use.

Location

The Poets' Guild is headquartered in Sirdab, but has numerous chapter houses scattered across the caliphate. Harmony Hall, the house of the Omrazir chapter, is located in the Palace Precinct hard by the al-Ruviyya Plaza, where it can be accessed via a discreet back door onto a corner of the plaza. Its front, however, faces onto the court called Poets' Place, whose shaded confines are a popular loitering spot for precinct residents, who come here not only in hopes of hearing the recitation of a new or favorite composition, but to see and be seen and rub shoulders with other potentially influential and interesting persons.

Rivalries

The Poets' Guild is known as an elite institution despite the humble origins of some of its greatest members, and consequently it tends to view other cultural organizations with some disdain, even if not all Poets share such prejudices. Nevertheless, the guild's bitterest enmity is reserved for the College of Mages whose own prestige is on the rise. In turn, while the mathemagi of the College look down upon all other magic users for their "primitive", "crude", or "superstitious" methods, they reserve some of their most crushing condescension for the Poets. This is doubtless in part a consequence of the cultural influence and social power which the Poets yet hold in the caliphate, and which is deeply envied by many mathemagi. But it also reflects the very different worldview largely favored by the mathemagi, who believe in the power of logic and reason as opposed to (so they say) the frivolous mumbojumbo of poetic magic. The poets for their part strenuously dispute the idea that their magic or indeed any other part of their profession is any less serious than that of the mathemagi, and object that the mages confuse the Poets' venerable practice with the petty cantrip-chanting and outright charlatanry of the street musicians.

Furious at being maligned and condescended to by the mathemagi, the Poets' Guild has become vigorous and outspoken in their own disdain for "common" performers, and they work hard to widen the reputational distance between the two. So while there has been some amount of friction between poets and musicians since long before this time, the rigorously policed barrier between the two is a recent development born of the Poets' desire to defend their reputation against the growing menace of the mathemagi, whom they feel threaten to displace them in society.