I teach creative writing at a college and one thing I have found is that often my students dread poetry week. This is partly because at school we’re taught to dissect poetry as if it’s a dead rat in a science lab – to pull apart the words and root out the ‘correct’ interpretation.
But it’s also because culturally we’re taught that there are two types of poetry- good poetry (which generally means deeply esoteric poetry) and bad poetry (the rest).
I’ve been listening to Lemn Sissay’s podcast Poetry Rebels and in one of the episodes he talks about how the Liverpool Poets were initially dismissed by the poetry establishment because they didn’t use poetic technique.
And it’s still happening. The poetry world is chock full of gatekeepers. There are so many different types of poetry these days which is great – there has never been a better time to get involved. But sometimes it seems like each crowd wants to stifle the others.
I’m not sure how to define my poetry. It isn’t particulatly cerebral, it isn’t folk poetry and I’m definitely not a performer. It’s taken me a while to fully embrace the label poet for myself because I’m not too sure where I fit in. But I have embraced it. I have learned to own my poetry without placing it in a box.
I wonder if it’s time we stopped dismissing the poetry of others as bad, just because it isn’t to our taste? Can’t we all learn to co-exist and embrace the creativity instead of pushing people out of the club? There’s space for everyone.
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