IN DEFENCE OF POETRY

Poetry is noted for being a nowhere nothing doing career. I beg to differ - from the gasp of despaired cosmic hope to universal love to the commune with other voices and the equal tone

Either all embracing simplicity or complexity that goes for it - it's a ground to sustain life and humanity

From the wretched to the wise ass to the wispish aesthete it opens doors - it's the fact of a doorframe as the poetic world resident Adrienne Rich wrote

So if you write poetry and you've been fatally pulled into the turbulence keep swimming.

Either as something you do for a hobby or going against all pragmatic instinct and you live and breathe the dust and mineral

Write - it opens doors. I don't know where for you, be it an abstract area of thought or writing a better cover letter for a job

Writing a letter of consumer complaint or something you believe in

Or just how your days been - or a rush of made up words or a visual poetry

I could say its a civilising agent, civil being the part of the word that's more important

I could say its wild and rebellious

But it opens doors before and after you