What In Bob's Name Is A Poem Anyway

I have a book called 'Hollywood Foto Rhetoric' that Bob Dylan wrote the text for many years ago. There's an interview with him from 2008 in which the interview says, "Do you consider the pieces in the text poems?" Bob says, "I don't know, you'd have to ask an Academic that." The interviewer says, "But what do you think?" (He's obviously never read another Dylan interview.) Bob says, "I'd have to ask an Academic too. But who cares?" Which is exactly how I feel about my poetry. Or whatever you want to call it. Everything is poetry. Nothing is poetry. "A poem," as Bob once said, "is a naked person." All I do is write. What you want to do with it afterwards is up to you, I'm not looking for a career or a seat on the Faculty and I sure as hell don't want Andrew Neill to give me £30 000 because I'm "accessible" like Jo Shapcott. I refuse to take an award from anybody who edited a Rupert Murdoch newspaper and dyes the grey out of his hair.

I will not bend to lick the shoes
of Larkin, Heaney, Plath or Hughes.
Call me anything you choose.
Like Ron Whitehead, I refuse!