This feature was originally published by ARTEMISpoetry (13 November 2013) and is delivered here with the permission of the publisher, Second Light Network of Women Poets (SLN) and the award-winning poet, Myra Schneider, whose most recent of eleven collections is The Door to Colour.

Some months ago at one of the twice-yearly poetry readings, which I help organize for Poetry in Palmers Green, a woman I didn’t know, turned to me as she was leaving and said apologetically: ‘I’m afraid I don’t write poetry.’ It was as if she had been attending under false pretences. I told her we welcomed everyone and felt it important our audience didn’t only consist of writers. The conversation reminded me sharply that in Britain poetry is in the main seen as a separate world. Who would go to a concert feeling uncomfortable that she/he didn’t play a musical instrument?

Why is it that…