Why We Need Poetry

Poems have been a part of my life on many levels. You don’t have to open a poetry book to read a poem. When you read your child a nursery rhyme, when you sing a song, when you hear an idiom from Shakespeare — the rhythm of words shapes our lives from a young age.

Rhyme helps children learn, and setting music to words helps our memory. You can probably quote many nursery rhymes off by heart:

Many of these rhymes are very old and have origins in history or folk tales. There is speculation that Baa baa black sheep refers to tax complaints or comments on the slave trade. Poetry like this preserves culture and has interest aside from the child-friendly rhythms.

As I child, I liked humorous poems or ones that I could identify with where the author commiserated with me or could see my point of view. I particularly liked this poem, Bed in Summer, about the annoyance of going to bed in the long light evenings — the bane of every child’s existence!

Nonsense poems appealed to my sense of imagination and helped to develop a love of fantasy that I have to this day. Jabberwocky from Through the Looking-Glass was a favourite:

In my teens, song lyrics were the form of poetry I became most familiar with. Combined with music, poems can inspire emotions and creativity. Like many other teens, I wrote my own brand of awful angsty poetry (thankfully, it’s now lost in the mists of time!). At this age, poetry is a way of expressing feelings that you can’t form in any other way. It acts as a release, whether you are writing your own, or listening to songs that you identify with:

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