Poetry is a way of expressing feelings in vivid and interesting ways; good poetry says something that people remember and think about - it captures something of the essence of life in words.

At one time or another, most people are poets. Everyone naturally responds to rhythm in words; and at moments when they are feeling emotions strongly - the loss of a friend, the dreadfulness of war or famine, the beauty of daybreak and the dawn chorus, a Cup-Final success - the language that they use changes. They find more imaginative and vivid ways of describing things.

Good poetry - and even some less good - casts a kind of spell; it says something in a vivid, memorable, true way that lives on in the mind and flourishes there.

Old people, who may in other respects be forgetful and vague, can often repeat poems that they learnt 60 or 70 years ago as children; not merely parrot-fashion, but with feeling.

Children recognise the value of poetic experience naturally. They live largely in a world of dreams, and they get to know the real world partly through their fantasies and daydreams. The traditional nursery rhymes, as well as verse written by children, are full of violence and destruction but also show strong feelings about love, and a keen response to the world around. They have a sincerity and truth.

Today people tend to use language with little feeling. Television and cinema have tended to make us concentrate on what we see rather than what we hear. 

The art of natural poetry has not died. Although many pop songs and songs from musicals are pretty awful and lacking in imagination, some of the best are excellent modern poetry.

One of the functions of the poet is to draw our attention things to which the rest of us are blind, or of which we are only vaguely aware.  The poet’s thoughts, feelings and observations may not be more vivid than ours; but he or she has the clarity of mind and command of language that can trap them and make them live for us and through us.