I recently submitted a poem to a likely-looking online magazine, shortly receiving a rejection (quite reasonable) with the added comment that if I were to fork out some dosh for 'membership' I would get some 'feedback' from a pundit (not so reasonable). I didn't. Then the other day I read on a writer's forum a comment by a young poet who submitted one of her poems for review. When it came back revised, she reported, the poem no longer expressed what she'd intended it to.

We're led to believe that (particularly for free verse) there are no rules in poetry, but that's belied by the number of supposed pundits prescribing rules right left and centre, starting from 'no rhyme' (which is a legitimate matter of taste but not a legitimate universal prescription) to 'don't use the word shard ', which seems ridiculous as a global prohibition. But it gets much worse. I just found on the web a list of 112 prohibited words 'in all of their forms' 1 (111 actually as one's a duplicate) including, among many other quite commonly used words, black, cloud, death, earth, eye, grass, life, road, sky, snow, wood and world.

Now the web site where the list is posted is called Pretend Genius so it might just be intended as satire. I certainly hope so, but there's always a suspicion that we're witnessing a Freudian slip. If this list were to be taken seriously it would require us to write off hundreds of well loved poets from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Walt Whitman, Robert Frost and Joni Mitchell.2 And this is the fundamental problem with Rules. Regardless of whether they prohibit or enjoin, they're essentially restrictive – they banish and exclude, not just new works that fail to conform, but entire canons of previously valued works. But even if the list of the banned is only deemed to apply to current works, we have to ask why? What's suddenly different about the way the humans who read poetry think and feel that makes the words snow and road (or even shard) unacceptable? I suspect it's no more than 'because I say so'.

Who then are these pundits who apparently know much better than anyone else what constitutes legitimate poetry? Do they represent the wishes or preferences of the wider potential readership? Or merely those of a self-defined 'elite' for whom writing and reading poetry is a shibboleth designed to exclude the plebs, instead of (as it should be) a powerful means of connecting with our common humanity?

In most cases it's likely to be the shibboleth, as evidenced by much 'criticism' which seems to consist of little more than eulogy of favoured texts – for example we're told a boring piece of text is a 'sublime poem' and just have to accept that or be classed as aesthetically defective. But it may also be partly down to ignorance. There's an apparent lack of historical awareness among the most vociferous and restrictive of the rule-makers. They seldom discuss any poetry written earlier than the last century, or if they do so it's superficially and typically in derogatory terms, merely stressing how much 'better' modern poetry is supposed to be. Comparing such attitudes with those of the few truly historically literate modern poets,3 it's immediately obvious that detailed understanding of poetic traditions is accompanied by greater acceptance of variety and rejection of arbitrary rules. Which suggests a parallel to the Dunning Kruger effect – ignorance makes one narrow minded.

Unfortunately though, the proliferation of 'creative writing' courses (to PhD level now) has put the most successful of the rule makers at self-promotion largely in charge. From positions of even minor academic authority they act both as maintainers of the status quo by conditioning their students into conformity, and as gatekeepers to recognition for independently emerging poets by providing guidance to publishers and competition organisers on what to select (and indeed, perniciously, by providing emerging poets who feel unsure of their talent with homogenising feedback on original and non-conformist work).

So beware of the bull – it's taken over almost the entire field, but you can avoid it by walking round outside the fence. The bull will snort at you but you'll be safe, though you will have to walk a lot further to get where you want to go. Ignore fashions; read poetry widely from at least the last several hundred years in your own language; read poetry written in at least one foreign language (in translation of necessary, but if so in multiple independent translations) covering the same period; ignore analysis and criticism as they're likely to be pretentious bunk; make your own mind up about what poetry you find effective; in the meantime, keep writing when the urge manifests itself but don't force it. Eventually, your personal poetic vision and voice will emerge spontaneously from this preparation. Your poetry will develop a style and subject range that will be truly yours, and that's worth more than all the prizes for conformity in the world. You'll have become a real poet, for whom success is not winning awards or signing publishing contracts (nice though they are), it's contributing to the eternal fond of human understanding.

 [1] Pretend Genius banned word list

 [2] Chaucer – Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (and many other instances), Shakespeare – Come Away Death from Twelfth Night (and many other instances), Walt Whitman – Leaves of Grass, Robert Frost – Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Joni Mitchell – Both Sides Now from the album Clouds

 [3] e.g. A. E. Stallings Oxford Lectures on Poetry