Journalist and poet Jack Shamash

AFTER major life events – national tragedies, personal loss – a large number of people will start writing poetry.

Much of it will be pretty poor, but people feel that only verse can really express their deepest feelings.

Dylan Thomas suggested ways of dealing with death: “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Of course, he could simply have said: “No matter how close you are to death, you really ought to struggle on.”

This would scarcely have had the same impact. It would just sound a bit trite.

Poetry can make you think. TS Eliot in The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock says: “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”

Many people will have gone over the line repeatedly and questioned the purpose of life. And other poems can make you contemplate the immensity of creation.

William Blake wrote: “Tyger, Tyger burning bright, in the forests of the night. What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”

Makes you think, doesn’t it? Why did god make the tiger?

And poems can be funny.

Hilaire Belloc – in many ways a very bitter and dogmatic Catholic – wrote hilarious poems. “Matilda told such dreadful lies, it made one gasp and stretch ones eyes.”

“The Chief Defect of Henry King, Was chewing little bits of String.”

Poems can be smutty, desperately sad or uplifting.

One of the most popular British poems is Rudyard Kipling’s IF.

People find it so inspirational that they often frame it and stick it on their toilet walls.

Other poems can be used to mark major events.

In military terms, the Charge of the Light Brigade was scarcely very important. But Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem means that 170 years after the event, people are still aware of the 600 cavalry charging into the valley of death, “Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die.”

And, of course, the area around Camden and Islington has been one of the great centres of British poetry.

Andrew Marvell, who wrote the poem To His Coy Mistress, urging his girlfriend to go to bed with him, (“Had we but world enough and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime.”) was buried in St Giles church just off Tottenham Court Road.

Percy Bysshe Shelley courted his wife (Mary Shelley) in St Pancras Churchyard.

TS Eliot was associated with the Bloomsbury set and Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes lived in Chalcot Square in Primrose Hill.

I currently run the Poetry Shack. We have feature performers and open-mike slots.

And there are always large numbers of people who want to read their poem.

Writing and performing poetry is very liberating. You can say what you like and you can say it in any way you like.

It can be about going to the shops or breaking up with a partner or the failings of the government.

It can be as short as you like. And it always surprises me quite how good some of the poetry is.

Does it matter if it doesn’t rhyme?

Well everybody likes a rhyme. And rhymes are very memorable. So if you’re going to write poems that don’t rhyme, they had better be very good ones.

The poetry shack is held on the last Tuesday of each month at the Candid Arts Centre, 3 Torrens Street, EC1 1NQ just behind Angel tube station.

On October 29 the headline act will be comedian and poet Arthur Smith.