I 've just read an essay 1 by an apparently established modern poet challenging whether poetry is a craft. It's not quite clear to me what else it might be, but the author concludes he had to 'abandon a strict adherence to craft' because he considers poetry to be a 'living thing' (I'm not clear about that – I've never caught my poems wandering around or trying to reproduce). But whatever one might think of the conclusion or that reasoning, the author's argument falls down on a false analogy.

He compares poetic composition to making a wardrobe, considering the latter to be an outcome of 'craft' – performance in it being improved by practice, whereas in his own experience quality of poetic composition wasn't. Although that seems a rather superficial definition of 'craft' I can sympathise, but I can also understand the source of his problem, as he states " 'real' craftsmen work with materials that have consistent properties." In the context of the wardrobe, I beg to disagree. Having in my youth been apprenticed for a while to a cabinet maker and having repaired stringed instruments as a hobby, I can safely assert that wood is probably one of the most varied substances on this Earth. Not only are there properties of individual species utterly unique to them, but every piece of wood of a given species differs from every other, and each piece can vary in its properties along its length or across its width (and all this variation actually accounts for its spectacular versatility as a material). The only 'consistent' materials now referred to as 'wood' are chipboard and MDF, but they're merely wood refuse (sawdust and grindings) compressed with glue, and have neither internal structure nor real durability.

Now the difference between a craftsman-made oak or mahogany wardrobe and one assembled out of chipboard panels is inconceivably vast. The first has durability, individually unique beauty and, as a result, intrinsic value for possibly centuries, but the other is a packing case in disguise that'll be thrown on a skip after a few years. But the analogy with poetry is apt if unfortunate. If we write 'chipboard' poetry, it too will finish up on a skip, because the attributes of the product can never be better than those of the materials from which it's made. It also follows that if all our poetry is made out of 'chipboard', it'll never improve beyond the packing case standard, however much 'experience' we accumulate.

For the English-speaking poet, 'wood' (the almost infinite variety of species, pieces and conditions of timber) is the vast tool kit of form and style, modes of expression, vocabulary and presentation accumulated in the European/Scandinavian traditions over more than a millennium, plus, optionally, elements from comparable tool kits of similar longevity from other cultures. Given the vast range of options this represents, the craft consists of making appropriate selections from this tool kit to best express the meaning and purpose of the poem. It's not engaged at the level of details such as 'how to construct a sonnet' – that's technique,2 which craft must already take for granted.

On the other hand, poetic 'chipboard' is the sparse box of tricks that have become fashionable among the essentially closed Americo-European circles of 'professional' poets and critics since around 1950 (just one lifetime). Its range of acceptable alternative tools is very limited, so it can be really hard to select appropriate ones to impart any given message optimally. Consequently, opportunities for exercising (and indeed improving) one's craft are severely constrained. Hence, quite possibly, our poet's reported lack of progress. But abandoning an inadequate tool kit in favour of trying to work without tools is not as effective as learning to make use of a thoroughly adequate one that's there for the asking.

If we want our poems to have appreciable durability, beauty, strength and internal structure (which must exist in some form or other unless we're merely happy to spout nonsense) we must use 'wood', not 'chipboard', as our material, and we must use carefully selected pieces of the right kinds of 'wood' to suit our specific purpose – maximising the power of the message we're trying to impart. Otherwise our poems will be made of nothing but verbal sawdust compressed with glue.

 [1] Will Harris, Do All Rabbit Hutches Look Alike?, in Rishi Dastidar (ed.) The Craft, Nine Arches Press 2019

 [2] We do need technique, but, as the mathematicians say – it's necessary but not sufficient. The distinction between craft and technique is exemplified by the way a master blacksmith works on a large piece. He has a 'hammer man' working with him. The blacksmith (the craftsman) plants light blows with a small hammer that indicate where and how hard the hammer man (technician) must strike with the large hammer to actually deform the metal. The blacksmith knows from experience exactly what's required, whereas the hammer man just has to know how to interpret the blacksmith's signals and perform the necessary actions. The double stroke used to be clearly audible outside a real forge.

 In general terms therefore, craft is intuitive, technique rule based. So for us poets, the craft is in intuitively choosing optimum techniques, forms and so on, the technique being in implementing them with precision. It's self evident that command of technique must come first, but it's easy to get stuck at that stage and never progress to real craftsmanship. At the purely technicianship stage of a poet's development their work will not yet be a craft, and it's a fundamental mistake to confuse technique with craft and progress no further.