I 've just been reading an excellent obituary of Dolly Parton by Annie Joy Williams, and it brings out a phenomenal truth – Dolly was a real poet. For some sixty years she wrote and sang with clarity and polish about things of importance to her public, and her public haven't forgotten her or what she said.

Compare that with the widely documented state of 'poetry' today – that there are more and more unmemorable 'poets' but fewer and fewer readers of 'poetry', which can only mean that the notional poets are not talking to the public about things, or in ways, the public find of interest. As poetry (like all literature) is essentially a medium of communication, that seems to suggest failure.

As I see it, mainstream (what an awful adjective in this context!) poetry has become a specialist hobby like stamp collecting – fascinating to its practitioners but irrelevant to everyone else. It's got stuck in a rut – obsessed by the need to be modern, inward-looking and contemptuous of any public good. At worst it's become little more than the monotonous song of the oozlum bird as it flies in ever decreasing circles, and we all know where it finishes up.1

So what's the solution for us poets? It's summed up by a quote from Dolly herself, courtesy of Annie Joy Williams – 'find out who you are and do it on purpose.' So don't follow 'fashion'; don't be pretentious; don't be obscure for the sake of it – write from your heart the way you find most effective to get your message across to real people, and be proud to to do that. Initially you'll find it hard to win competitions and get published, but if enough of us find out who we are and do it on purpose, the groundswell can eventually change the world, just like Dolly did.

 [1] An alternative description of this wonderful bird, equally apt to the 'modern' poet, is that it flies backwards in circles in order to admire its own fancy tail, or because it doesn't really know where it's going.