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Why are so many adults afraid of poetry – and what can we do to help?
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree.
Eh? What Coleridge’s incredible line of poetry lacks in immediate sense is made up for in the musicality of its language. Which is why one person might be left staring blankly at the page while someone else takes it like a hit of sniffing salts to the brain. In the same cultural moment in which poetry has never been so popular – to the tune of £15m spent on books in 2023 – there are still reports of people being "scared" by the art form. Not in the way they’re scared of "The Exorcist" or meeting their ex out jogging, but it’s a thing. So, what can be done for those who are nervous of poetry?
Fear of poetry is often put down to a bad experience at school. When my son was in the last year of primary school the teacher announced that Poetry Day was cancelled and sat back as the class cheered. This wasn’t about the children; this was about the teacher. There was fear there: fear of teaching it, which had built over months to the point where the students were as a tense about Poetry Day as the teacher – and as relieved when the prospect disappeared. Rather than deal with their own fear, the teacher spread it through the class. This is far from the norm by the way, with most teachers embracing the challenge of teaching poetry and finding inventive ways of doing it, but it does say something about where things can go wrong in our relationship with the art form.
A few years before, when my son was about six, he came home from school, gushing with excitement. He had something to tell me: "Dad, dad, guess what?" I was intrigued: what ninth wonder had been discovered, new atom broken, portal opened? "Poetry can make sense!" he said. His introduction to poetry at home had been left field, with his parents bringing him up on experimental sound and visual poetry, so that his discovery of easily understood poetry was mind-blowing. We’d never really talked at home about the need for poetry to "make sense". The main thing now was that he was excited by poetry, which was suddenly a shifting, hard-to-pin-down thing – the cat of the arts. This is so true of my experience at the National Poetry Library of how much children love and embrace poetry given the chance.
You don’t have to wait for a funeral to enjoy a poem […] who wouldn’t get involved if they knew it there was so much fun to be had?
Poetry shouldn’t be overthought in the early years of school. It’s worth remembering that the books that babies and toddlers first read, and read themselves, usually make no distinction between poetry and prose. Words float on the page, sometimes rhyming, inviting articulation. These books, which may or may not be poetry, are loved and bring families together. Only when the child goes to school does ‘poetry’ become a separate thing, isolated at Key Stage 1. But all that’s expected here is for literacy to be demonstrated through enjoyment of reading and for students to try out some poetry writing. This should be approached with joy, as a form of play. As the poet Rebecca Roach says: "We are a meaning-making species. Ever since we invented language, we invented something fun/ awesome to do with it." This is the spirit through which poetry should be approached, simply embracing the awesome things poets do with language.
The second most important thing is not to force poetry on people later in life; it’s not medicine or a tax return. Ben Lerner writes in The Hatred of Poetry that the art form "is defined […] by a rhythm of denunciation and defense. Many more people agree they hate poetry than agree what poetry is." Paradoxically, my view is that poetry lovers shouldn’t rush to the defence of poetry, but take the moment to share a few teasers, for example asking, "what kind of poetry do you like?"
This can be enough to raise awareness that there’s a world of texture in the art form. You don’t have to wait for a funeral to enjoy a poem and though it might be as simple as some people choosing to live their lives among the elevated language of poetry more than others, who wouldn’t get involved if they knew it there was so much fun to be had?
This is why we’ve launched The 70-Poet Challenge at the National Poetry Library. The 70-poet Challenge comes out of the library’s 70th birthday and its aim is simple: to create an exciting new canon of poets, selected by you, the people. You have between now and May 5th to discover 70 new poets ("new" to you) who have published in the past 70 years, writing in any form or language. These poets can be discovered anywhere from YouTube to Instagram, from your local library to a conversation in a pub. We will then invite the most popularly voted-for poets to Southbank Centre to read their work on the big stage. If you’re feeling creative, you can also take part in the bonus challenge of writing a 70-word poem and we’ll select our favourite to join the new gathering of popular poets on stage, who will be presented by Lemn Sissay, who is leading the challenge.
Poetry is viral, and just as fear can spread, so can the joy, which can flame unexpectedly like a kingfisher catching fire. Silence the inner saboteur, it’s time to make some noise with language.
To get involved simply download the PDF entry booklet here or get in touch and we’ll send you one.