"I am not a poet, so I am frequently amazed by them"

Anna Spargo Ryan reflects on what poetry means to her, following her 30in30 commissioned poem 'Dust' for Poetry Month 2021.

I am not a poet, so I am frequently amazed by them. The ability to use only the precise words required to convey meaning is miraculous. Great poets seem more like musicians than writers, running their hand along a shelf and making careful selections where definition is as important as resonance is as important as cadence is as important as sound. Poetry, to me, means the incomparable wonder of finding in a poem some exact inarticulable thing, and walking away from it to find the meaning only existed in that one form that had captured it exquisitely.