Poetry is a load of old rubbish.

Poetry? It's a load of old rubbish!

That's the sentiment that I hear from a lot of people. Not morons or fools but people who have not been exposed to it, taught it, or fallen upon it one rainy Sunday by chance. Of course, I happen to think that they're wrong but it's the devil's own job to get them to see another side. Why? And why is poetry not just nice/beautiful etc but actually crucial to the general art of fiction? By the way, I'm choosing my words carefully: I do mean crucial.

First of all, why do so many people think poetry is rubbish? I think it's because most people when they think of poetry only think of limericks. Now, these can be fun but they really represent a very small (miniscule) subset of the superset that is poetry. So, you say poetry and people instantly think 'There was a young poet from Mawdor, who was a frightful old bore...' etc. Or they think of Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings (quoted in Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), or, perhaps that infamous Scottish poet William Topaz McGonagall.

Of course, these terrible poets are all fun to lambast but the joshing sometimes creates an impregnable barrier to accessing the good stuff.

A further problem, I think, is that people sometimes think that all poetry has to be iambic pentatmeter and the minute they hear that term they run a mile. It's been said by many that iambic pentameter lends itself to the natural speech patterns of English. In The Ode Less Travelled, Stephen Fry tells us that 'The rising rhythm of the five-beat iambic pentameter has been since the fourteenth century the most widely used metre in English poetry.' Well, OK, I will concede that but it can, I think, be difficult and feel quite laboured and personally I reckon that iambic tetrameter suits the language better. Hang on. All these terms: iambic; pentameter; tetrameter. What do they all mean? Now I know that many who read this will know what they mean but many won't and for those who don't I would recommend finding out and deliving in to the different poetic terms. Find out what enjambment is, seek out the elusive trochee, and learn the difference between a limerick, a sonnet (and the different forms therein), and all the other forms of poetry.

There is something else though and that is: imagery. Poetry is often an exercise in imagery. Pareidolia (the psychological phenomenon of reading significance into random stimulii - like sights and sounds - like the Man on the Moon) often informs poetry. Poets often have to think very visually. That is also true of fiction writers and it is my belief that a fiction writer who also writes poetry (even if they only dabble from time to time) will develop an increased ability to write from a visual perspective and that that is why poetry, as I stated at the beginning of this post, is crucial to the art of fiction. It is a shame that that isn't taught with more fervor in schools and defended more robustly when the statement 'Poetry? It's a load of rubbish!' is made.

By the way, April is National Poetry Month. Why not give it a bash? You might be pleasantly surprised at the results :)