Background
I am well aware that when "Poem" is the title of one of my blogposts, viewing figures will plunge. A lot of people - though thankfully not all - have an antipathy towards poetry. But to me she is a familiar bedfellow, by my side for well over six decades. As a teacher of English, I often had to grapple with the habitual and obstinate grumble, "I don't like poetry!" It was a prejudice that ignored the delight that most people find in song lyrics or that small children find in nursery rhymes or when people choose epitaphs. The retort also niggled me because I simply could not understand it. It seemed so sadly misguided. There's a notion out there in the world that poetry is somehow snobbish, highfalutin and cast down from ivory towers but I think of it as a vehicle for getting to the very core of things. Every word should matter and there should be no excess. Poetry should speak truly but sometimes mysteriously too. When I was seven years old, I was up in my b...