At a recent Poetry and Poets evening in Penzance, a first-time visitor enquired if was necessary for poetry to rhyme. The poets there, thankfully, in my view seemed to agree that it was not the case.

As someone who is quite at home writing in both forms, I recognise that there is still a considerable amount of condescension, especially from the established publishing world, that the use of rhythm and rhyme in poetry is seen as somewhat inferior to blank verse. In my opinion both are difficult, but in different ways. By limiting yourself to words that rhyme, the inference is that you are stunting your own creativity

Perhaps the poet I most identify with is Tony Harrison, I first came across his long poem “V” about the desecration of his Mum and Dad’s grave in a Leeds cemetery with National Front and Leeds United graffiti and there was a voice complete with ‘foul-mouthed’ (and I put that in inverted commas) language that I understood. Erudite but not ashamed of his working-class upbringing, he is one of our country’s foremost poets and often writes of his childhood. He only writes in verse; he understands the power of writing in verse. “The iambic pentameter is like the heartbeat of language”.

Use of verse gives poetry a musicality and let’s be honest the vast majority of people have always preferred music to poetry.

There is something about rhyme that subliminally carries the listener with it. They want to stay with it…they want to hear the rhyme and rhythm and be satisfied by it. Clive James said, “Poetry has to get the audience’s attention in the first instance.” But it depends who you want to talk to. If you only want to have the approbation of the literati then don’t write in verse. Although Keats, Wordsworth, Poe seemed to do all right. I suppose deep down, he is saying there is no point in being profound if you aren’t accessible.

A modern performance poet Tony Walsh aka Longfella says “there’s a reason rhyme has been around for thousands of years. We live through rhythms and heartbeats. I think we’re hardwired to receive rhyme. When you get that balance between meaning and rhyme and flow, there’s a music to it which we respond to instinctively.”

I once performed with four other poets on a show we subtitled “poetry for people who thought they didn’t like poetry” Many people were turned off poetry by their schooling when they were asked to do poetry appreciation; which was basically learn this poem by heart till you can still remember it line after line when you are sixty.

Poetry is changing how it is viewed in schools through people like Cornwall’s very own Poetry Postie, Sally Crabtree…who gets how much  children like playing around with words…and we see how rap culture engages working-class kids into an interest in rhythm, rhyme and through this self-expression. There are poets like Kate Tempest who are taking rap beyond the tedious ‘big I am’ self-aggrandisement thing and actually providing us with social comment…it’s about urban life…and hopefully is making young people give thought to things. At least it is getting us away from the idea that ‘only dead poets rhyme’

Countering the argument – why restrict yourself by only using words that rhyme, John Cooper Clark  defends his use of rhyme in poetry in that it stops you becoming “over-verbose” and it “concentrates the images…disciplines them and makes them accessible” From my own point of view it opens up ideas because, I’m not ashamed to say, I make use of a rhyming dictionary and the number of times it has thrown a new angle up…even in my poem about seagulls…I had the idea of their incessant fouling and saw it as an incontinent stuka’ and discovering the rhyme ‘bazooka’ created this great image of Tippi Hedren, star of Hitchcock’s The Birds, who despite being a well-known animal activist must really hate seagulls…allowed me to come up with the line,  “And Tippi Hedren gives helpful tips – one of which involves a bazooka!”

Tolkein (not known as a poet) said, “All writers know that sometimes in order to “rhyme” they have to say something that they did not mean to say, or want to say, though they may try to conceal that… But all verse writers (who write in regular metres or patterns) also know that their imagination will be stirred by the actual struggle to find a rhyme or a word that will fill the place, and they may end by thinking and saying something better than they first intended”

“I think…that it is best to start by practising the fitting of words into verse patterns, including rhymes and other difficulties, rather than to try and express oneself and let the verse go to pieces“…but, he sighs, “it does not seem today a very popular view.”

I have found what Tolkien refers to is true. The restriction of choice on your writing means you have to dig deeper into your imagination to make the writing work. The verse poetry I write has reinforced in me the view that Tolkien was right.