This was a topic that was discussed earlier this week in the debating society that I'm in and although everyone was fairly respectful and open to new ideas, it was pretty conspicuous that I was the only person in the room who was even a regular reader/writer of poetry, not to mention possessing a real passion for it. I know I'm biased, but that was a revelation which was pretty shocking to me: as someone who is surrounded by such a copious amount of fellow writers and wordsmiths, it seems insane to think that there are an increasing amount of people in the world who fail to see the relevance of such an art in today's society. Now first, let me reassure you - I am certainly not here to try and convert anybody into a lover of poetry. You are free to appreciate or disregard it to whatever extent you wish and I have no desire to force anything upon anybody. My aim of this post is nothing more than to simply share my reasons as to why poetry has such a special place in my life to whoever is listening and willing to learn.
Poetry is an art which lacks definition
The entire essence of poetry is freedom; there are no rules. So many people swallow the commonly accepted misconception, perpetuated by our education system, that a poem has to be littered with literary techniques such as rhyme, meter, alliteration etc in order to be valid and it really couldn't be further from the truth. Poetry has developed so much over time that it's become impossible to capture what a 'poem' really is. Whether it's ten pages or six words long, rhymed or blank verse, you could even argue that a poem doesn't require actual words found in the dictionary. Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance; our entire existence in this physical form is poetry in motion.
