Many of us watched in wonder last week as a poetry maelstrom occurred. Around 300 poets were invited and went off to meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace for the purpose of celebrating British poetry. And why not? Poetry certainly deserves recognition for being one of the last art forms that is supposedly unsullied by capitalism: there is no money in poetry which means no vast sums of money changing hands. It is not fashionable (as much as marketing executives have tried), and most importantly, a large number of poets are hugely subversive and anti-establishment.

However, perhaps these things should not be the defining features of a poet - the ‘angry young men’ (or women- since they’ve been allowed) image of poets is probably outdated or a romantic notion in itself; but I had rather thought that poetry is at least one of the places where independent, progressive thought is best served.

Let’s be honest, elitism is not particularly civilised - if anything it drives people apart, causes rifts and gives weight to a kind of magical thinking or myth-making that is not at all based in truth. How can we move forward without a reasonable acceptance of reality?