does poetry matter?

so

what about those poets

with world vision?

no?

well how about

national vision then?

William Blake for one

PB Shelley another

our poet laureate

Carol Anne Duffy

could she be so

along with Kate Tempest

and her like?

in America

Allen Ginsberg tried

and Laurence Ferlinghetti

continues to try

to save America

from itself

‘poetry makes nothing

happen’

wrote old Auden

so was this

a self-fulfilling prophecy

or

a cry of failure

who reads him

any more

anyway?

is poetic ambition admirable

we wonder

or self-delusion

and who cares outside

the incestuous world

of professional poetry?

outsider poets

couldn’t give a shit

and like them

the rest of us

are pissing in the wind

anyway

Jeff Cloves
Montage: Claire Palmer