Writing poetry is often approached with trepidation, yet it’s more accessible than many think. Let yourself be inspired to dream up some of your own

Poetry. Perhaps you’ve thought about writing it but were too shy to try. Or you tried but were put off by the idea of rules or rhyming. If so, you’re not alone. The prospect of composing a poem can strike fear into the heart of anyone who thought they’d left the subject behind at the school or college gates, filing it in a mental folder marked ‘Done and dusted’.

That could describe me. Like most people, my first foray into so-called serious poetry was at school. We studied war poets, such as Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke, and Shakespeare’s sonnets – not worlds I deeply related to. Sylvia Plath’s poems, filled with drama and tragedy, were a bit more appealing. And TS Eliot: well, his Jellicle Cats was definitely my bag (or Bagpuss, if you’ll excuse the pun).

Poetry was an art removed from reality – or so I thought, until I heard performers such as Jamaican-born dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson and punk poet John Cooper Clarke powerfully reciting their verse in nightclubs. So, poetry really could rock. And Maya Angelou’s rousing anthem Still I Rise remains one of the sassiest gems of feminist writing I’ve ever heard. Just one verse, from the middle, gives you an idea: