It’s the late-20th century way – to regard the arts as obsolescent, self-defeating, obscure, dying. A lot of artists do this as part defence mechanism, part a means for getting money – ‘help me, I’m like an endangered cultural species!’ Actually it probably explains a lot about the typically leftist culture in the arts – because it’s a mentality that the left find very appealing and understandable.

Me, I just write poetry – and essays – and blogs – and stories – and just about everything else. I’m not sure whether it’s a compulsion, or what, but the urge has come to seem so much a part of what I am that I can’t regard the art as obsolete.

An even better reason for not regarding poetry as dying: people listen to what is, effectively, poetry all the time and don’t feel embarassed or important. Song lyrics are of course one example of this. But then you also get people who go to stand up comedy shows where the comic specialises in comic stories, or comic songs, or comic poems.

How these events are different from, say, a performance of a Shakespeare comedy is merely a matter for semantics.

Interestingly, blogs are a good medium for poetry, and that’s why you often see commenters indulging in limericks or haiku to make jokes or further their arguments…