Poetry: A Daft Business

Hello there, dear readers and people who accidentally clicked on this while trying to find pictures of cats wearing hats! Today I shall pontificate, ruminate, and possibly hallucinate about the marvellous world of POETRY.

What Is Poetry? Nobody Knows!
Poetry is like trying to catch a fish with your bare hands while wearing oven mitts. It's utterly ridiculous and yet people have been doing it for centuries.

I started writing poems when I was a small child, possibly Tuesday. My first poem went:

Roses are red 
Violets are blue 
Some poems rhyme 
And this one doesn't 

HAH! Got you there! You expected "too" but I gave you "doesn’t”. That's what I call MASTERY OF THE FORM.

Rules Are For Breaking, Like Biscuits
The stuffed shirts and academic types will tell you poetry needs "meter" and "structure" and "to make some kind of rudimentary sense." FLAPDOODLE to that.

I like to mess with form. I take sonnets and turn them into shapeless blobs. I make haikus with nineteen syllables. I write limericks that don't end with Nantucket.

For example:

There once was a man from Peru 
Who dreamed he was eating his shoe 
He woke with a fright 
In the middle of night 
And found he was holding a small decorative garden ornament shaped like a flamingo

See? MUCH better than whatever predictable rhyme you were expecting!

Rhyming Is Optional, Like Trousers At Home
Traditional poets spend hours finding perfect rhymes. What a waste of good biscuit-eating time. I prefer the approach of:

1. Write whatever words feel right
2. Pretend they rhyme
3. If anyone questions you, claim it's "avant-garde"

Example:

The moon hangs bright in the sky tonight 
Shining down with silvery grace 
Like a giant cosmic frisbee 
Or possibly a basketball 
CHEESE

That last line doesn't fit at all. Brilliant, isn't it?

Poetry Should Be Fun, Unlike Tax Returns
The trouble with poetry these days is people think it must be SERIOUS. About IMPORTANT THINGS. Like DEATH and LOVE and EXISTENTIAL DREAD.

Nonsense. Poetry can be about your left shoe. Or that weird dream where you were teaching algebra to a group of enthusiastic penguins. Or simply the joy of writing words that don't normally go together:

Cabbages dancing on tiptoe 
Spoons singing opera at dawn 
My neighbour's cat doing taxes 
While I eat cloud sandwiches 
On Wednesdays

In Conclusion, Which Is Not Really A Conclusion
Poetry is just another form of creative expression, like interpretive dance or making rude noises with your armpit. It's meant to be played with. Stretched. Turned inside out and shaken until the loose change falls out.

So next time you sit down to write a poem, remember:

• Rules are suggestions, much like speed limits on a unicycle
• Rhymes that don't work often work better than rhymes that do
• If someone says your poetry is strange, thank them profusely
• The best poem is the one that makes you laugh, or think, or throw the book across the room in delighted confusion

As the great philosopher (me, this morning) once said: "Poetry is like wearing your underpants on your head - it makes ordinary life extraordinary, and gives the neighbours something to talk about."

Now go forth and create something gloriously, magnificently WRONG!

The author then fell sideways off their chair and had to be revived with strong tea and Jammie Dodgers.