Guest blog: Why Mr St Helier doesn't like poetry

We regularly carry guest blog posts from BBC journalists talking about their experiences in the island and the stories behind the stories.

We've decided to open this up and have invited Wayne Stewart, the current Mr St Helier and local comedy promoter to write a guest post.

Wayne is no real fan of poetry, so we're sending him to the Arts Centre to see the Petty Concerns of Luke Wright, a poet from the UK who has sold out audiences at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Before he goes to the show we asked Wayne to explain what it is about poetry that winds him up.

Here is his report.

What is poetry?

One definition I found reads:

"Poetry is an imaginative awareness of experience expressed through meaning, sound, and rhythmic language choices so as to evoke an emotional response. Poetry has been known to employ meter and rhyme, but this is by no means necessary."

This is already starting to make me angry.

I will try and chose my words carefully, or at least intend to. I don't want to offend any poets but then I don't want to befriend any either.

I hate poetry.

The above definition outlines some general principles on which poetry is based but then states "this is by no means necessary".

So from what I can tell a poem can be whatever you want it to be.

How is writing a poem an achievement? Like writing the rules to your own game so that you will win regardless of the outcome.

Is the quality of a poem defined by how much it is enjoyed by the reader/audience? It seems to me that the only people who enjoy poetry are people who write poetry, like it's all one big "in-joke".

It's like a group of people who were never good at anything decided to just make up something to be good at. I can't help but feel poets are just showing off and that they'd like you to think that it's not the poem that is bad, you just don't understand it.

To me a poem is like a song only without music and said instead of sung, without the things that make songs enjoyable.

To me a lot of poems sound like the ramblings of someone who simply can't find the words to express something that not even they are sure of.

Instead they use disjointed metaphors and analogies. "Get to the point!" is what I'd normally say to that person.

I wrote a poem once, after the days of rhyming "cat" and "mat" or "two" and "poo" at primary school.

I was a teenager, scribbling words of angst and frustration, faith and lust in the hope that one day someone would understand me. It was complete nonsense.

I've since grown up and learnt to communicate properly without sounding like a pretentious moron.

I pride myself in being a very forgiving person. I appreciate everything the arts have to offer and the role it plays in culture and society, but I am yet to find a place for poetry.

So this week I will be seeing "The Petty Concerns of Luke Wright", Wright's fourth solo poetry stage show, described by The Stage as "one of his strongest shows to date - witty, inventive and, at times, quite raw", but who's to say that reviewer isn't in on the "joke".

I will have an open heart and mind, I will let poetry into my life for one night, like the ex-girlfriend who wants just one more chance, will I discover a whole new side to her, or is she still an annoying cow?