Reclaim Poetry

How did I get started on poetry? I went to something called a "story cafe" at Leicester Library, which was part of the "Everybody's Reading Festival". As it was convened by a poet, Jean Breeze, it attracted people given to poetry. So they poesied away, while I wrote prose. Gave me an inferiority complex. After a while, I thought "If they can do it, so can I". So I wrote a very angry poem, and showed it to a few friends. Easy-peasy. And that would have been that, except for some unlikely coincidences. One of my friends said he had been attending a "Social Inclusion Group" for depressed people, and they were writing poetry there. Their poems were all ferocious denunciations of Job Centre Plus. 'Great!' I thought. 'Poetry isn't completely useless after all.' Another friend asked me to accompany him to the Word! workshop. Word! is a local poetry society. I went along, and found myself writing more poetry, as previously blogged:
http://www.stephen-wylie.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/word-poetry-workshop.html

I had a bit of momentum after that, and carried on. Some other writers I knew started telling me off, saying poetry was uncool, they hated poets etc. Yet I found they'd written a few too, on the sly. Hmmm.
What's this all about then? Why has poetry got such a bad press, that it's become a kind of guilty secret?
I consulted my own prejudices against it, and found it was due to a distaste for intellectual snobs and pseuds, who have tried to make poetry their own. Yet at Social Inclusion, they are reclaiming poetry for the people. And why not? It's a natural method of expression, which anyone may use, just like prose. It doesn't have to be arty-farty or pseud.
      So I've hoisted the battle flag, and proclaimed "Reclaim Poetry for the People!" as my revolutionary slogan. I proclaim the people's right to rubbish rhyming and dire doggerel. After all, literary merit is entirely subjective anyhow, unlike golf scores. Why should people be mocked if they break into rhyme? Ordinary people are allowed to express themselves in prose without being sneered at by their 'betters'.