Poets seem to be good at dismissing the poems of others. Philip Larkin disliked the poems of most poets who lived around the same time as him, saying of the lifetime work of one well-known poet that he didn’t write one good poem. Larkin also disparaged his own earlier poems. R S Thomas as well was dismissive of contemporary poets, including Larkin.

Maybe poets’ facility being dismissive of each other’s poems revolves around the confusion of what is a poem. For some people poems need to follow a strict form, and if they don’t they’re not poems. But the range of creations that somebody, perhaps only their creators, call poems is vast, and there can be no universal agreement on what is and what is not a poem.

I found useful this categorisation of poets by the Scottish poet Willie Soutar, who starts with the assertion that “we are all poets.”

“It is true ‘we are all poets’: some wholly mute, some able to utter a few syllables, some capable singers who yet remain no more than imitators, the genuine minor poets ranging from the creator of a handful of lyrics to a ‘little master,’ and then the few masters themselves who have surmounted their individuality without discarding it, and become the representatives of the age: men who, by an inner compulsion, looked unwaveringly upon the good and evil.”

[When Soutar wrote this in 1943 the word “men” would have ben recognised by all as including women.]

I write things that I call poems, but I wouldn’t dream of submitting them to a poetry magazine. Many, probably most, people would not call them poems, and I think that of Soutar’s categories I’m in the “able to utter a few syllables” category.

Nevertheless, I want to share this “poem” because I think it expresses some truth even if it doesn’t amount to being a poem.

I wrote it before Trump made his threat to bomb Iran’s energy sites, which he seems to be trying to wiggle away from.

And I wrote it before I read this from Azadeh Moshir, South Asia correspondent, on the BBC website:

“For decades, the Iranian government has shown it is willing to sustain high levels of damage to its economy and suffering amongst its people, in order for the regime and its “revolutionary values” to survive.”

Letter from the Iranian people to Donald J Trump

We will outsuffer you,

You who know little of suffering

With your hot water, air conditioning

Drugs for pain and melancholy

And food on every plate.

You think mistakenly

That bombs and belligerence

Win wars.

But what matters more

Is the capacity to suffer.

We have suffered for centuries

Under every colour of tyrant.

We have known the heat of the desert

The cold of the mountains

And the anger of the oceans.

Martyrdom, you don’t understand.

Alive we win

Dead we win.

For you death is loss

For us gain.

We have another weapon too

One that wins wars

Conquers invaders:

Meaning.

What is this war to you

And your people

(who are not behind you)?

You seek money, oil, fame, security,

Gewgaws without meaning.

We know why we fight and suffer

But our knowledge

Our meaning

Is hidden from your sightless eyes.