Clarity is

a murky word despite itself, sitting

on the topsoil of reasons I’m supposed

to embrace this odd alchemy / this way

of sharing thought / this beautifully bizarre

approach to scattered words in some time strange

shapes. I’m certain some feel different to me,

certain many pick up poems and hope

to see through them, but I have always searched

for the opaque / always been dazzled by

the haze of vagueness poetry seems to

inspire. I’m scared like we all are – or all

aren’t, which is perhaps even scarier –

but a poem can be a kingdom in

which blindfolded foresight makes perfect sense

and the political and personal

align like nowhere else. Perhaps it would

be easy to label my attachment

a modern phenomenon / attribute

the groundswell of love towards volumes of

verse to the uniqueness of my peers / claim

the rise in buying and reading pages

bound and bulbous with poems is a new

response to recent chaos, but surely

we poets know better. We know the world

screams as loudly as it always has done,

the young are the same as the young always

are, poetry is a language we have

spoken since we could speak, and most of us

don’t ask poetry for clarity, but

for an escape / for the chance to run far,

far away from the unmistakable.

• Bridget Minamore is a poet, critic and journalist who writes about theatre and pop culture. Her first pamphlet, Titanic, was published in May 2016