This one is for you. The one who just scrolled past the word poetry and almost kept going. The one who remembers being handed a poem in school, something old and dense and full of words that felt like they belonged to someone else, and thinking, "This is not for me.” I understand. I was you once. Somewhere along the way, poetry got a reputation. It became the thing behind glass in a museum. The thing you were supposed to understand, but didn't. The thing that made you feel you were missing something everyone else could see. And so you decided poetry was for other people. Smarter people. More literary people. People who drink tea in silence and underline things in pencil. But here is what I want to tell you. Poetry is not that. Poetry was never that. It's poetry when a song starts, your chest feels tight, and you can't explain it. It is the text message you wrote to someone at two in the morning and deleted before you sent it. It is the moment you stood outside after the rain and breathed in, and something inside you shifted. You have been living surrounded by poetry your entire life. You just didn't know it had a name. I write poems for people who feel things deeply but don't always have the language for it. I write for those who cry at films and can't explain why. For those who notice the way the light changes in the late afternoon and feel something move inside them. For the ones who have been told they are too strong or too weak, too kind, too early or too late, too fast or too slow, too sensitive, too emotional, too much — and quietly believed it. Poetry is not about being clever. It is about being honest. It is about taking the enormous, tangled, impossible mess of being human and finding a few words that make it feel less lonely. That is all it has ever been. You've Already Been Living Alongside Poetry You do not need a degree to read a poem. You do not need to know what a metaphor is or what iambic pentameter means. You need only to be willing to feel something. And if you are reading this, I already know you are. I think the reason so many people believe poetry is not for them is that they were given the wrong poem at the wrong time. They were given something that demanded to be decoded rather than something that asked to be felt. And there is a difference — a big one. The poetry I love — the poetry I try to write — does not ask you to figure it out. It invites you to sit with it. To let it find the place inside you where there is a connection. Sometimes a poem will make you laugh or cry, and you won't be able to explain why. That is not confusion. That is the poem doing its job. I have had people message me and say, I never thought I liked poetry until I read this. That sentence means more to me than any award ever could. Because it tells me that the door opened. That someone who had been standing outside, thinking this room was not for them, finally walked in and realised it had been theirs all along. Why So Many People Believe Poetry Isn't for Them Poetry belongs to everyone. It belongs to the mother rocking her baby at three in the morning. It belongs to the teenager who feels everything so intensely that they think they might burst. It belongs to the man on the train, staring out the window, thinking about someone he lost. It belongs to you, reading this right now, wondering if maybe you have been wrong about poetry this whole time. You might have. And that is a beautiful thing. Because it means there is a whole world waiting for you that you haven't explored yet. A world where feelings have shape and weight. Where three lines can say what a thousand conversations couldn't. Where you can open a book and find yourself on the page and realise you were never alone in the things you feel. You don't need to start with anything long or complicated. Start with something short. Something that makes you stop scrolling. Something that makes your breath catch. That is your poem. That is the one that was written for you. Poetry Belongs to Everyone Poetry is not a locked room for the chosen few. It is an open field. And you are welcome here. So if you are the person who almost didn't read this, who almost scrolled past, who has spent years saying poetry is not my thing — I am glad you are still here. Pull up a chair. Stay a while. I think you are going to like it here.
