One compared the princess to the poet s dead flamingo. Even if I had possessed a dead flamingo of my own, this poem wouldn t have reached me. It was burning off emotion, using poetry for something personal, not public. Millions of people in Britain write poetry for themselves, for an audience of one. This is a precious thing.
Private poetry is as important as anything published for others.
But it is different from published work. Private poetry is a way of coming to terms with life. Public poetry is a gift, written for others before it is written for the self. But it is worth being aware of the difference. If you write private poems and then try to give them to others, you risk hurting yourself.