I deem myself necessary to recall to you my views on poetry and its stance within art in our modern day world. I am twenty years old, and seemingly the only person who is intrigued by the beat generation, by the romantic eras, by poetry as a whole. Where are the collectives? Poetry is dying and everyone is too scared to recall their feelings in verse that it shall die an untimely death.

The only poetry being created as on late is dreary old poems about flowers, fields, the loss of a loved one, not that i am condemning this, but there is no spark, nothing entertaining, nothing to exert an opinion.

It doesn't matter whether the grammar is good, whether the words are amazing, it just matters that people are trying to do something grand. I want everyone who agrees with me to email me on dalesmith1987@hotmail.co.uk

This isn't a spam message or anything at all, i just want like minded poets to speak to me and to keep me in touch with everything.

I love and praise you all for your words.

dale smith x

hey dale, listen I'm 22 and I must agree that yes there are too few published poets of our age....however, look around, go to open floor evenings and soon enough you'll find that you can't swing a cat without hitting a collection of poems.....I must say I know of dozens of people who are performing their poems and dozens more who write them....poetry is not dying I just don't think you are looking hard enough!

......................and if you still have difficulty look harder!

Two young poets you might be interested in reading are Eleanor Rees and Luke Kennard. Also, Chris McCabe. They're probably a few years your elder, because 20-22 is rather young generally for a first collection (although Caroline Bird was in her teens when she was published by Carcanet - you might want to check her work out.) All three are published by Salt: www.saltpublishing.com

There's plenty of interesting work out there if you look for it.