All children love poetry; not all grown-ups do. Somehow it gets lost on the way -- William Wordsworth explained why. It might be more correct to say that children love rhyme. Without it they would hardly be so enthralled.

We will take an example.

"Halt, halt" the robber cried

"And hand me out your riches".

"I can't, I can't" the man replied

"For I'm holding up my britches."

If you took out "britches" and put in "pants" it wouldn't be funny at all. Rhyme creates the magic. I have tried many a time to understand but I am still at a loss. All I know is that without rhyme our nursery poems wouldn't be poems.

Of course as children we loved those poems, even though we knew they were only nonsense verses. Here is my favourite.

"Mary had a little mule, one day he followed her to school.

"The teacher like a fool, went up behind the mule

"And hit it with a rule. There wasn't any school."

The typical poems in the primary school were mostly about battles. A "poem" that began "Stand ye now for Erin's glory" was about The Battle of Clontarf. We were led to believe that it was The Final of The European Cup between Ireland and Denmark -- of course it wasn't that way at all.

I was lucky: I discovered Patrick Kavanagh at an early age, first in The Irish Press -- and later in magazines. Here was real poetry -- and it was about the world that I knew. In later life he used to say that he should have remained in Monaghan rather than come to Dublin. He would have made a fortune in smuggling during the war years -- or so he said. Of course he wouldn't -- some people are born not to make fortunes.

He came to Dublin because he wished to meet people with whom he could converse. Back in Monaghan he had plenty of neighbours who could talk all day and night -- but not about poetry.

Dublin attracted him as London had attracted Samuel Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith -- it was an intellectual capital -- kind of. It wasn't the heartland of mental and spiritual ferment that Kavanagh had visualised -- in many ways it was a petty town. Times were bad: most people were poorly paid -- and worked at jobs they deemed beneath them. There was much bitterness, born out of frustration. Kavanagh encountered back biting and front biting. In his own words, "The standing army of Irish poets was never less than five hundred." Alas -- many of them weren't poets at all. "Poets are born, not made" is an old saying. It could be rewritten as "Poets are born, not paid."

Kavanagh inevitably drifted towards McDaid's in Harry Street in the heart of Dublin. It was the craziest pub west of Soho -- or west of anywhere. To call it an intellectual centre would be a wild exaggeration -- and yet it was always alive with a mixture of fact and fantasy. You could hardly drink a pint or even half a pint without meeting someone who was working at the great Irish novel. And you could meet someone who had written a long poem but lost his only copy of it. You could also meet playwrights there and actors and singers and musicians -- in reality, it was a pleasant friendly pub. It was always a consolation to meet people as crazy as yourself.

John Jordan, God rest him, was McDaid's resident guru. He felt entitled to insult everybody -- and usually did. I was often the target of his arrows but I didn't mind because he always treated me kindly in print.

Almost all of the regulars in McDaid's had a serious drink problem -- the price of it. Eventually a long-feared day dawned: McDaid's was sold. A terrible respectability was born. Under the new management the pub took a long time to have a character of its own -- in the meantime it had all the atmosphere of a suburban pharmacy.

The regulars from the old pub were now like one of the lost tribes of Israel -- they had no spiritual home "to go to". My friend Jim Fitzgerald, celebrated drama director, summed it up: "The ship deserted the sinking rats." Relief was at hand: Paddy O'Brien, charge hand in the old McDaid's, took up work at Grogan's in South William Street. The lost tribe came flocking back and civilisation was safe. Work re-commenced on The Great Irish Novel. Epic poems started up. The back biting and the front biting went on. Kavanagh himself was a putter-down. Benedict Kiely was almost unique -- he was a great encourager. There were a few arrogant regulars who deemed themselves super- intellectuals. Genius is said to be an infinite capacity for taking pains -- it can also be an infinite capacity for faking brains.

Some good people are put off poetry by all the highflowing nonsense that is written about it. Poetry belongs to the people. My attitude to the highbrows is simple.

"When someone debates on the poetry of Yeats,

I'd like to know where and not to go there."

Many people think of poetry as the province of gentle dreamy creatures. I think of a night when Brendan Kennelly won the Final of The North Kerry League with a kick from away out in the country. Afterwards in the pub a veteran bogman approached him. "Are you Kennelly the poet?" "I am." "By gor, for a poet you have a great belt of a ball."

Discussing your favourite line of poetry was a favourite pastime long ago. It still is -- occasionally. One night in The Palace Bar when my turn came, my friends waited with unabated breath. Perhaps they expected that I would quote from Shelley or Keats or Wordsworth himself. Of course I was tempted to do that. However, I thought of all the crazy circumstances in which, on the verge of breakdown, I had phoned back reports to The Evening Press. And I especially remembered Mexico in 1986 in the wake of two earthquakes. I skipped the great poets, and I delivered my favourite line of poetry -- "This is the Dublin International Telephone Exchange."

Fogra: In a few weeks' time I hope to explain Wordsworth's theory about poetry.