The answer is "yes" and "no".

I was doing a project that involves the usage of poetry and a short story to convey a message across to our group's targeted audience. The topic? Xenophobia. It is the fear of foreigners. It also involves some form of discrimination against the other races, but is quite different from racism itself.

But I'm digressing.

The main point is that poetry can only play a part in swaying people and getting them to overturn stereotypes and discrimination IF....

The poetry is of an understandable standard. One that appeals to all ages, has good poetry sense in it and conveys the right message across to the audience.

The right way to put a message across to an audience is in a convincing, appealing way.

Poetry can be written in such a way to be made appealing and convincing to the audience, so that they can get the catch of it and possibly, get rid of their steoreotypes and discriminations of the subjects they are directing them at. Like my group's project objecive was to use poems and a short story to debunk myths and stereotypes about foreign workers.

The thing is, you need to be able to convey the message in an appealing way that is full of morals. It shouldn't be too difficult to understand, or the result will be a bunch of people who do not understand anything the poems are about and thus, the effect of the poems are unachieved, defeating the purpose of writing them.

Only a person of higher standards of poem appreciation and comprehension would understand, and exactly how many such people are there in this world?

Not many. So there you go!

Poetry can play a part in overturning stereotypes and discriminations. It just depends on how you use it to do so. And how effective it is.

And that depends on how you write it.