Official.

If you put a group of poets, teachers, pupils and parents in a room to talk about why we do this, we come up with a wide range of answers. Here are some I’ve collected: it’s a good way to open up conversations about our lives, experiences and feelings; poetry often uses the sound of words to express feelings without actually saying what those feelings are; it’s a good way to express “big ideas in small spaces”; suggest things without necessarily coming to a conclusion; express a single moment without necessarily relating the consequences; play with language without it having to be literal; confess things about our lives; soap-box about our beliefs; express identity and culture; and, because it “borrows” voices from a wide range of sources (including poetry itself), it has an infectious quality that enables many of us to imitate it, parody it, learn it and play with it. We are able to do all this without any direction from on high. We just do it.

Now, though, there’s an official view of what poetry is for ...

CONNECT