'An artistic way of describing things'....sounds nice. 'A persons effort to express himself through rhyme or not'....interesting. 'rhyming lines'....not always. 'Attractive verses'....close. 'don't av a clue mate!'..............

Whilst trying to establish a definition for the word 'poetry' as you can see from the answers to my questionnaire I came across interesting, amusing and clever descriptions. My own favourite definition sums up my feeling about poetry, it is something I read on the back of a poetry book recently;

'poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking.'

Poetry means the something different to almost everyone from the window cleaner who left school at fourteen to the highly educated head of English at Malvern College. Poetry is whatever you want to be, whatever it means to you personally and whatever it means to the poet.

I have interviewed over twenty people and what I have established is that everyone has their own definition of poetry. However there is a basic difference between poetry and prose. It seems to be that poetry can be set out in many different formats, and does not necessarily need to make complete sense (eve

Greetings cards can also contain poetry, especially valentines cards as poetry is often related to romance. You hopefully have received or written in your life a poem like this;

A good example of this is the War poets who changed our thoughts and feelings on war. I can't believe that anyone who has read a poem like 'Dolce et Decorum est' could not feel moved.

and she was able to recite a poem she remembered from school about a 'violet' by Ella Wheeler Wilcocks. She was in her 60's and if she had not been made to recite poetry at school she would have missed many wonderful experiences and enjoyable moments in the rest of her life.

Later at GCSE we almost all study poems by Shakespeare, Keats, Chaucer or Wordsworth. Then some people go on to study English Literature at university and look at poetry in much greater detail. However the rest of us are still exposed to poetry every day, when we listen to the radio, walk down the high street or send someone a valentines card.

As we approach the millennium it is obvious that the role of poetry is expanding both as a commercial tool and as a private indulgence in our leisure time. Today there are new poets for every mood and occasion, there are more song writers, more script-writers, more advertisements, more poets than ever before. This is because poetry has many roles from persuading Mr. Smith to buy a Mars bar to giving Dot the laundry lady endless hours of pure enjoyment.

It is interesting that today most people would wrongly think that opera and theatre were only for "educated" and/or well off people. It is ironic that in Shakespeare's times entertainment of this time appealed particular to poor and totally uneducated people. Perhaps the image of 'boring' plays has scared off the less 'educated

Some common words found in the essay are:
College Poetry, , Wheeler Wilcocks, Ted Hughes, English Literature, Couldn't Humpty, Humpty Dumpty, Chaucer Wordsworth, Y' GCSE, Poet Laureates, role poetry, poetry poetry, whatever means, today's society, recite poetry, type poetry, laundry lady, operas plays, able recite, song lyrics,
Approximate Word count = 1191
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)