One of the signals of language is poetry; in its inked variety it’s conveniently called writing. Just as well. Anyone who wants to be a writer of a nongendered description can call him/herself a writer if ink is accepted as a synonym for any mark that is used to metaphorise language. Whether we write or read, think or feel language, when it comes to poetry, ink is the basic concept; even aired poetry is a blanket component of inked poetry. All of these formulations are supposed to provide the poet with a life of comfort and convenience. Now we know what we are talking about and how to proceed. Writing poetry is making a choice. Making that choice becomes a real rather than an actual possibility long after the person has learned to read and write, that’s again years before a person becomes a poet. Making that choice in our society is based on being able to read and write. Obviously, the choice is for poetry.

                                     (Johan de Wit)

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Reading William Cowper’s poems, tucked in amongst ‘To the Immortal Memory of the Halibut’ and ‘Lines Sent with two Cockscombs to Miss Green’, suddenly you come across ‘The Negro’s Complaint’, more powerful and more direct than anything in Blake:

Is there, as ye sometimes tell us,
Is there one who reigns on high?
Has he bid you buy and sell us,
Speaking from his throne the sky?
Ask him, if your knotted scourges,
Matches, blood-extorting screws,
Are the means which ...