I’ve actually bought, read and enjoyed several volumes of Don Paterson’s poetry, but his snooty comment about introducing poetry into the workplace sums up a lot that is wrong with modern poetry: “If it’s not a good poem, then it’s a meaningless activity” (Better or verse? Poetry used to inspire workers, 7 March). He misses the point. The workplace morning meeting is not a university tutorial analysing whether a poem is good. It is a way of getting people to widen their horizons, and “jolt the mind” as a New York Times picture editor is quoted as saying. Paterson’s comment shows why my shelves of modern poetry will be a rarity.
Andrew Napier
Southampton
• Don Paterson says that only good poems are worth reading to boost workplace productivity because they “remind you that the most powerful use of language is an original combination of words”. I would argue that some of the spoken-word poets Paterson has championed in his role as poetry editor at Picador don’t do much of this. In fact, they do quite a bit of what he accuses some of our conversations, and journalism, of doing: “using entire phrases as if they were one word”.
Tristan Moss
York
• The poet laureate, Simon Armitage, attributes the increase in the number of trees around the village of Marsden to natural regeneration and other passive factors (Magnetic fields: Simon Armitage on the pull of Marsden, 7 March). In fact, the area has had an active tree-planting volunteer group since 1964. With the Woodland Trust’s support, Colne Valley Tree Society volunteers are out every Saturday in winter planting native species in and around Marsden and the valley. They plant about 6,000 trees and shrubs a year.
Simon Lyes
Secretary, Colne Valley Tree Society
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