I'm studying Creative Writing in university, and my first poetry lectures were all about trying to define what poetry is. Personally I found this a bit unnecessary; I've never felt the need to put the entire art of poetry in a box, draw a diagram of it and give a lab report on its composition - it's one of those things you just feel, right? However, in class we were asked to write an Ars Poetica, a poem about poetry. I'd like to share mine with you. (Be gentle - I had to write this under pressure, in class, in ten minutes!) 

A POEM IS JUST INK IN THE SHAPE OF

A splash of ink. Like divided by a

miniature Moses, into a shape of something.

A spot becomes two, then stretches to

a line, forming letters. It draws a naked Venus,

excuses the rage of Caliban.

 

Like a hairbrush and a pocket mirror, words

can be a tool to make one beautiful on a Monday morning,

a tool which lets one admire the result -

the way a dream, or a thought, or a kiss,

never could.

 

They can draw a forest where you get lost

on a long dawn, but whose trees give comfort;

you don't mind being lost.

 

They can be a fire boiling up the soul,

searching for a colourless spot in an

Impressionist painting, and finding

a place to rest from the violence of the world.

 

Nothing more than ink, in the shape of something.