A while ago we had a debate that asked,What is Poetry?
       I will risk it and give my thoughts on this recognising that it may
well differ wholly or in part from other’s opinions.
      So what is poetry? There are so many contentious, differing points of
view, that if I did succeed in defining it today I would be wrong tomorrow.
Better perhaps to accept that many things could be presented as poetry,
averred to be poetry, valued as poetry by different groups at different
times. It might prove more fruitful to wonder if that is the right question.
Perhaps we should be asking ourselves Why is poetry?
         It would not harm to look at the origin and history of poetry to
get at some idea of what it actually is, how perhaps it originated, why it
exists as an art form.
           Poetry emerged along with dance as part of religious ritual, it
was probably around in some basic form around evening fires before the hunt
the following day when dance and music and sounds were used to create the
‘magic’ for a good hunt.
          Later to exorcise spirits or praise and appease the Gods
           In our own English culture we have the bardic tradition when
bards were seen as holy men and poetry was a form of guarding and
communicating secrets of the tribe.
          The golden years of Greek civilisation gave us much of the
language of poetics strophe, stanza, iamb, trochee etc all emerged from the
Greek. Strophe and stanza mean ‘turn’ as in a dance and dance was an
important element in religious rites. I feel sure that when we refer to
iambs and trochees , et al, as ‘feet’ we are remembering dance origins and
that rhythm is the dictation of the patterns of dancing feet. There was some
notion of measurement in the use of rhythms like the analysis of a line into
iambs and trochees and their counting. Indeed the word measure was often
referred to in dance, indeed as the dance itself.
        There have been many developments and schools of style and form and
content since then , of course. I could not itemise them nor do I think you
would want me to.
    Yes, but what about modern poetry. We don’t hunt anymore. We don’t need
magic anymore. We are human beings, we are in control. What is the poetry
for us and for our time??
        I like to believe that all of us or at least most of us write poetry
because we are called to do so. The call is siren and irresistible. We are
called to protect, sustain and nurture this most ancient art. We are kin to
the visual artist, the musician, the dancer, the novelist and no less than
they. Some of you may shrink from such an idea of the art form being of the
spirit but in your hearts I think you know well that it is. We are guardians
and acolytes.
    Don’t we need that magic, that ability to evoke the spirit of an event
or place or time then ? I think we do. I think we know it is there and that
we search for it by all sorts of means. Religion, mathematics, science,
philosophy, visual arts, music, literature all seem to me to be ways in
which we seek to understand and order the experiences of this life. Order
and, thence, control and explain them.
     For me, poetry is my own personal means of making sense of something
that science and philosophy, religion and knowledge, does not help me to
understand. It is sure they enable me but often each of them restricts their
explanation to its own linguistic sphere, limits the depth of my
understanding to its own language and idea scheme. Poetry releases me to
explore the depths and inter-connections, allows me to integrate.  Poetry,
for me, captures just as surely as the midnight dance round fires captured
tomorrow’s food; it conjures just as surely as it conjured wonderment and
faith long ago
There is something beyond the ability of science and knowledge to explain.
Indeed I think science chooses to ignore things it cannot explain or measure
or quantify.
        There are moments, and I hope I share this with many of you, when
all the elements of a time or place or event cohere as a single brilliant
experience, an insight, an epiphany. It can be the profile of a particular
landscape, a nuance of weather, a single sudden event, a state of mind of
the observer, all these things, coinciding like, as some one said here,
putting your fingers in a light socket. To be sensitive to that coherence,
that gelling, that essence of a moment, is to live poetry. To capture it or
attempt to capture it is to write poetry. To relive the moment at a time
apart from the actual event and by proxy is to read or hear  poetry.
So why is poetry then? It is there as a medium to invoke the deep magic and
mystery of this confusion we call life.
These are just some thoughts I share with you all and welcome your
responses.