The Guardian has Antjie Krog on reading poetry to government, and why a country should read its writers.

The longer answer is that literature inflects the anguish of reality in a way that theoretical discussions of the same issues cannot achieve, making possible a kind of understanding not accessible by other means. Annie Gagiano remarked that being in the world and governing requires an intricate weave of perception and response of reacting and embracing. Reading literature's continuous "presensing" of the world, (as Heidegger put it) creates reflexivity and nuanced knowing.