lol

Me too Robert.

Not from I have read.

No it doesn't.

I'm sorry, but if you admit to not reading, I simply doubt you write good poetry. That's not really as harsh as it seems, by the way -- almost nobody writes good poetry, because poetry is _phenomenally_ difficult to write well. I mean, even logistically speaking, it's phenomenally unlikely to write good poetry without reading: poetry is text created by charging language with meaning, through all available means; that is, using every possible aspect of language to ensure that each word in a poetic text bears the maximum possible weight. Without prodigous reading, acquiring the intense and comprehensive knowledge of the multitude of ways words can mean necessary to actually _do_ that charging is nigh on impossible. Professing not to read much, or not to appreciate other poets, is a common enough affectation amongst successful poems (think of Ted Hughes, for instance). But this universally turns out to be just that: an affectation, a carefully curated attempt to seem rootsier, more primal. The poets who genuinely _don't_ read? There's a reason one never hears of them.

Malcolm Guite said it very well when he said when the poet writes he has every poet he's ever read's music ringing in his ears, and almost all poets start by aping their favourites, or even doing it intentionally to multiple poets as an exercise - many famous poets have poems titled 'A [blank] in the style of [blank]' or along those lines, and most modern poets when their collected works come around, their juvenalia will have very clear tones of older poets. Modern poetry is fine in itself, but the worst advice you can get is to not bother with poetical form or the canonical poets (especially from the mouth of teachers and other obnoxious academics with political agendas). The advice to not read is even worse. You need boundaries to break them, and modern poetry seems for the most part seems to ignore the boundaries completely, which i think is a major problem, but that's for another day

@@callumsutherland2954 When did Ted Hughes claim to not read? I'm not too sure what you mean - he has many essays on other poets and his own selected poems of other poets, and that's not even mentioning his huge tome on Shakespeare