The decision to proclaim March 21 as World Poetry Day was adopted by Unesco in 1999, in recognition of the unique ability of this art form to capture the creative spirit of the human mind.

Communicating the innermost values of diverse cultures, poetry proves that people everywhere in the world share the same feelings and thoughts.

However, different people have different ideas as to what is poetry and what constitutes a good poem.

Several great thinkers, including some of the best poets in the world have attempted to answer those questions and we have selected the best quotes, for your reading pleasure.

Plato

“Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.”

 Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.”

Leonard Cohen

“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”

Denis Diderot

“Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.”

Dylan Thomas

Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toe nails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own.

Salman Rushdie

A poet’s work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.

Robert Frost

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering