With a few enlightened exceptions, critics, publishers and competition organisers of poetry appear to recognise and penalise two cardinal sins: being old fashioned and being derivative. So let's examine these offences against the poetic art (or at least against the poetic cognoscenti) to see how awful and unforgivable they really are, and how one might avoid committing them.

An accusation of being old fashioned (behind the times, outmoded et cetera) can be raised against any writer who isn't slavishly copying the techniques and/or subject matter preferred by the accuser, so it's a very useful and versatile put-down. These days it's primarily aimed at any poet who employs rhyme or writes about subjects that resonate with ordinary folk – personal responses to love, loss and death; magic in any form; natural beauty – instead of concentrating on the legitimate topics of politics, social injustices, the minutiae of domesticity or the gory details of bodily functions.

But as fashions change unpredictably and swiftly, nobody can be assured of continued impunity. What I wrote last year to high acclaim may today be old fashioned without my having amended a single word (or more probably because I haven't). Nevertheless, however modern I wish to be, unless I merely plonk down randomly chosen strings of letters all over the page I still rely on a more or less common vocabulary, established basic forms (even free verse is one), recognised stylistic tropes and idioms from the literary past and so on. Therefore every single poem could be considered old fashioned to some extent. Were I to eschew all these elements of our common fond, my works would be utterly incomprehensible to all my readers – tales 'Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.' 1

Being derivative ties in with being old fashioned in a clandestine way. And it's actually an unavoidable 'Catch 22' 2 as well. Unless I'm an advanced successor to James Joyce, anything I write has to be intelligible,3 which inevitably means it harks back to some degree to something in the reader's past literary experience. So it's to that extent derivative. If I use old fashioned techniques, imagery or subject matter I'm being derivative. But If I carefully comply with the most current tends, I'm yet again being derivative – merely of the current fashion, rather than a deprecated one. So I can't win what ever I do.

So my advice is – once you've found your true poetic voice (and that does take time and practice) just ignore the slings and arrows of outrageous critics, as they reflect adversely on them more than they do on you. Although this may affect your chances of getting published, it would be a genuine cardinal sin to abandon your true voice for the sake of getting noticed by those who really care much less about poetry than they do about conformity and influence.

 [1] Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5.

 [2] Joseph Heller, Catch-22, Vintage Books 2004 (and other publishers and editions)

 [3] but darn it! Even if I follow Joyce, I'm being derivative.