I wrote this poem a while back for a topical, satirical blog on Mark Borkowski's blog site, but thought it worth posting again in the wake of Susan Boyle's discovery of the harsh price of modern fame...

I've always maintained that a good walk in the country clears my head and helps me write, but I've ascribed the creativity to the air, the surroundings, the fact that I'm out of the house and there are new sounds and sights and that all aggravations, obstacles and tedium related to the working day have been left behind. But I've never considered, for one moment, that it's actually the exercise that is the source of inspiration.

Poetry is the art of truth-telling and it takes many forms. Oratorical rhetoric seeks simply to persuade. Whilst there can be no doubt that Obama and his speechwriters have learned many lessons from poetry - most notably the way they boiled down of big ideas into a pithy, accessible and inspiring speech - to suggest that the inauguration speech itself was poetry is simply ludicrous.

Comfort, in small doses, is a wonderful thing, but if I have learned anything it is that too much of a good thing is wonderful, but only for a little while