My poetics – introduction

By poetics I don’t mean the Aristotelian tradition of seeking laws and principles for literature, more the whole rich, varied phenomena of poetry. I see poems are tools for maximising cognitive opportunities, which enrich human lives and culture. Poems are more than boxes of metaphor; poems are processes, which energise people, performances, and memories – over time. The poem is ‘scaffolding’, an opportunity for both creator and listener/reader to use language to think and feel.

My PhD thesis ‘A New Defence of Poetry’ updated Sir Philip Sidney’s and Shelley’s defences and was well received: “This is an extraordinary thesis . . . The total effect is undoubtedly an original contribution to the understanding of the role poetry might play in the contemporary world. [His poems] in their range of reference, and their mixture of personal, historical and natural perspectives, act as a really interesting companion to the accumulation of scholarly references in the other parts of the thesis. They are also excellent poems.” Dr Ivor Indyk.