Babies are not brought by storks and poets are not produced by workshops.

Writing for the page is only one form of writing for the eye. Wherever solemn inscriptions are put up in public places, there is a sense that the site and the occasion demand a form of writing which goes beyond plain informative prose. Each word is so valued that the letters forming it are seen as objects of solemn beauty.

At somewhere around 10 syllables, the English poetic line is at its most relaxed and manageable.

Generally speaking, rhyme is the marker for the end of a line. The first rhyme-word is like a challenge thrown down, which the poem itself has to respond to.

"Love" is so short of perfect rhymes that convention allows half-rhymes like "move". The alternative is a plague of doves, or a kind of poem in which the poet addresses his adored both as "love" and as "guv" - a perfectly decent solution once, but only once, in a while.

Imitation, if it is not forgery, is a fine thing. It stems from a generous impulse, and a realistic sense of what can and cannot be done.

The basic rhymes in English are masculine, which is to say that the last syllable of the line is stressed: "lane" rhymes with "pain", but it also rhymes with "urbane" since the last syllable of "urbane" is stressed. "Lane" does not rhyme with "methane".