Welcome to the start of my long-delayed blog. 

 I am an absolute beginner, so please be patient: I hope to get better with practice!

I am a poet so, for better or worse, much of what I write here will doubtless reflect that fact.  But quite what form it will take I have no clear idea: I think I’ll just plunge in to the icy waters and see what happens.  Here goes …

What does poetry do? 

What is it for? 

What use is it to me? 

And why should I care?

Hang on a moment, is the importance of everything to be measured by questions such as these?  Perhaps.  Perhaps not. 

There are plenty of things (almost always things, objects) you can point to as having a practical, measurable purpose – why do we have cars?  what do bricks do?  what is toilet paper for?  what’s the use of superglue? – inasmuch as we humans have either invented them or suborned them to ourselves: what does the ocean do?  what is coal for? 

This, of course, is the basis of seeing the world as a series of ‘resources’, things whose sole or main purpose is to enhance our own wealth or sense of well-being.  It’s as if nothing had a reason for existing until we humans came along to give them one, rather as the Garden of Eden myth implies that animals didn’t truly exist until Adam named them.  No name, no point.

So poetry?  Does it do anything?  What is it for?  If it doesn’t explicitly do something, why should I care?

Answers on a postcard, please.