AUTHOR'S NOTES; Poetry Is the Angling of Literature, Says Poet Mike Jenkins. the Merthyr Bard Argues It's a Major Participation Activity That Gets Hardly Any Public Exposure

What is the point of poetry? On the face of it, it would seem to be the literary equivalent of lacrosse: a minority sport that few seem interested in.

Fiction is the football of that world, selling by the lorry-load in many cases, compared to poetry's paltry sales.

Yet the reality is actually the opposite. When I was editor of Poetry Wales, the postman nearly went on strike as a result of the extra volume of envelopes he had to deliver every day. He developed a permanent stoop.

Of course, a great deal of it wasn 't very good and showed how few of the people who wrote bothered to read poetry books at all.

Poetry is, in fact, the angling of literature when it comes to participation. There are thousands out there who do it, many caught in …

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Publication information: Article title: AUTHOR'S NOTES; Poetry Is the Angling of Literature, Says Poet Mike Jenkins. the Merthyr Bard Argues It's a Major Participation Activity That Gets Hardly Any Public Exposure. Contributors: Not available. Newspaper title: Western Mail (Cardiff, Wales). Publication date: January 22, 2011. Page number: 17. © 2009 MGN Ltd. COPYRIGHT 2011 Gale Group.

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