If you take the time to listen carefully to the words of the best rappers – people like Eminem and Jay Z, and some of the female rappers too, like Lil’ Kim and Missy Elliott – then you’ll realize how good they are. It isn’t just poetry, it’s fantastic poetry. In fact, I’d say that some of them are the best poems being written today. Seriously, that’s my opinion. Now a lot of people say that young people are no longer interested in great poetry. But that’s wrong, isn’t it? A lot of teenagers listen to rap music and rap can be great poetry – even though some people don’t look at it like that. So I’d say that in some ways, poetry is more popular than ever among young people.

You know the poems I hate most? They’re the ones you get in greetings cards – birthday cards, Mother’s Day cards, that kind of thing. I mean, a poem has to be original, doesn’t it? To be a good poem, it has to come from the writer’s heart and contain some real emotion. It has to be about why the poet loves a particular man or woman – or why the poet is feeling particularly sad. These poems in greetings cards are all the same. “I hope your birthday is full of fun... er... You really are a wonderful son.” That kind of rubbish. I suppose people actually have to spend time writing them. Imagine doing that job! It would be so depressing, wouldn’t it? Writing rubbish every day.

We’ve been looking at some modern poetry at school, in our English classes. Some of it is OK but to be honest, I’m not keen on most of it. I just don’t get it. I mean, half of it doesn’t even mean anything! Or at least, I can’t work out what it means. It just seems like random words. Poetry didn’t use to be like that. In the past, it was always clear what the meaning of the lines was. And usually, it rhymed too. For me, that’s what poetry should be like. That’s the skill of the poet, isn’t it? If you don’t worry about meaning or rhyme, then you can just write anything and call it a poem! “A leaf on a tree … the sun shines … water flows … life goes on.” There, that’s a poem. Huh!

“Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul, / And sings the tune without the words, / And never stops at all.” er... “And something something something heard, and something is the storm.” Hang on... I can’t remember the rest. But it’s one of my favourites. It’s by Emily Dickinson. I love her poems. In fact, most of the poems I like best are by women. I think women make better poets than men – but that’s just my personal opinion, of course! I don’t find it very easy to memorize poems. It takes me ages! But I enjoy doing it and I really like having a few poems that I know from memory.

This is one I wrote last week. Ahem. “Black clouds fill the sky. A child screams but nobody hears. A white dove sings but cannot fly. I cry, but nobody sees my tears.” Yeah. I know… it’s a bit sad, isn’t it? Funny, really, because I wasn’t feeling down or anything when I wrote it. It’s often like that… If I write a really sad poem, it doesn’t mean I’m feeling sad. You know, it’s a work of art, isn’t it? It’s not the truth. Like a singer can sing a really tragic song without actually feeling those emotions for real. Most of my poems are pretty black – about death, disease, that kind of thing. I’m not sure why. I just like writing about those topics. I think they’re more powerful than happy topics. Who wants to read about people feeling great? It’s boring.