why poetry is essential

I hated poetry up until the age of 13 or 14.

I thought it was a con. That it was deliberately vague. Nonsense words that adults pretended meant something.

Aged 13 or 14 I fell in love and thought: where kind I find out about love? I know: poetry.

So I started to read it. So now I wasn't hostile, just not that interested.

Aged 16 I watched a TV program about Craig Raine who wrote 'martian poetry'- that is, poems with startling and clever show-off metaphors. Not much rhyming. (Rhyme scares people who 'don't like poetry'.) Suddenly a thought came to me: I can do this!

I started writing poetry. I worked out how to do it and began to look at all forms of it. I grew to love the intricacies of making words rhyme and puns ceased to be annoying and became intriguing.

But the best thing was that I learnt how to understand non-literal, metaphorical communication. If you aren't able to read between the lines, see levels within levels and understand when something is an analogy and when it is meant to be literally true then you will be at a grave disadvantage....