I’ve always been fascinated by what motivates people to write poetry. Creative exploration? Political oppression? Catharsis? Neurosis? Ego? I have a friend who believes that nobody actually likes poetry. He reckons that the scores of people who write it just pretend to like it in an effort to feel validated thus deluding themselves into the idea that they’re not wasting their lives.

He’s wrong of course, when I say I love poetry, I mean it. Not all poetry obviously, that would be ridiculous and suggest I had the critical perception of a concussed chicken. Its probably down to the way poetry is taught in schools that such large swathes of the population believe it to be some uniform generic entity. The reality is that it’s as rich and diverse as any other creative medium.

If you enjoy Wagner’s Das Liebesverbot, but find The Black Out Crew’s – Stick a Donk on it makes you’re ears want to commit a seppuku style ritual suicide using a high powered hammer drill, you’d probably still refer to yourself as a music lover. The same subjectivity applies to poetry.

Anybody with an interest in it has their own idea of what poetry should be, and because I’m passionate about what I do I sometimes find these disparate attitudes frustrating. For example, I believe that the majority of people consider comic verse to be the simple trouser sucking cousin of real poetry. Certainly less valid than political verse that broaches social issues. This mind-set makes me madder than Mad Bob McShakeyfist.

Poetry with a social message can be brilliant. When well written by someone who’s had first hand experience of the topic their broaching it can be enlightening, powerful and moving.

Unfortunately, given the context of your average uk poetry audience I struggle to find the point to a lot of ideologically motivated verse and if I’m honest it often grates my nubbin.

I’m going to say this slowly with a surfeit unnecessary pauses so you can tell I’m being sincere, but I believe that, like, war, famine, sexism, racism and poverty are all like, really bad things m’kay.

Feel suitably patronised? Yep, me too.

I also believe that white middle class liberals stating this gullet punchingly obvious fact to other white middleclass liberals doesn’t change things one jot, even if it is delivered in accentual-syllabic verse.

You could argue that this type of work lets disenfranchised groups know that there are people beyond their social faction who care about their plight, but this would be working under the assumption that the disaffected people suffering these hardships are going to spend eight quid on a theatre ticket to watch someone in a hand knitted pashmina talk about their troubles in language that potentially alienates them.

I do concede that at its best it can validate our shared social conscience and gives us a feeling of unity in our beliefs that could perhaps motivate us to work collectively towards a positive common goal. At worst however it’s an opportunity for self indulgent egotists to advertise their pseudo benevolence whilst we the audience can feel self righteously smug that we agree that bad things are bad without actually having to do anything about them.

I personally don’t believe that projecting your political beliefs in rhyming couplets makes a poem unless it’s done in a beautiful, clever or innovative manner.

At least with comic verse, even at its most base, if it’s made you laugh it’s given you something you didn’t have before. It’s added to the joy of your existence. Done well it can do so much more. I believe an orator is far more likely to sway public opinion using humour rather than pious hectoring or bleating disquisition. Yet despite its obvious and immediate benefits it’s often derided by the pathologically earnest as a pointless and inferior form.

A poem doesn’t have to be sombre to be well crafted. Good comic verse takes a great deal of skill to construct. Stand up poets still use language within limited constraints of poetic process, but with the added pressure of busting the funnies as well.

I’ve heard people say, well if you want to be funny, why not be a comedian. The answer is simple, I love poetry, I love the creative manipulation of language, I love painting pictures with words. I also love making people laugh, is it really so heretical to occasionally combine these two passions?