what is the point of writing poetry?

[Leanne]

And what I've tried to ask before is: Don't you see how poetry is important in how it affects people, despite the form? The symbolic power it gives to life? That poetry gives life a meaning? That's the way I was using the idea, Poetry. It challenges, and it soothes, and it angers, and it makes you happy, makes you think, and feel, and consider things. And do things, with a sense of purpose.

Poetry does those things for you. For someone else, it might be bungee jumping or shearing sheep. They find their understanding of the world, their meaning, in something other than you do -- that's neither less nor more important than yours.

When I published my first anthology, I of course gave a copy to my parents. They displayed it quite proudly and showed it off to all visitors. A few years later I mentioned something I'd written in it, to which my mother's reply was: "well I wouldn't know really, I don't like to read poetry".

At university, my lecturers were hell bent on telling everyone that formal poetry is dead -- do you see me taking their advice?

I've been writing for more than 20 years -- ten years as what I can safely call a "professional" (having made the grand sum of nearly $400 dollars in that time) -- but it took me until about 5 years ago to be comfortable with referring to myself as a "poet". I no longer care what people think of the title. It's what I do, and if they're not convinced, I couldn't care less. Why should I live my life worrying about pleasing others, when they don't please me very much either?