One was the sense, expressed by poet, actor and playwright Warsama, that the current media conversation was almost entirely one way.
In Wales, the National Theatre is working with poet and novelist Owen Sheers in ancient woodland, inspired by his poem Mametz Wood, which tells of the battle in which 4,000 of the 38th Welsh division were killed or wounded.
Along the way he became king of the lads: a poster boy for hedonism but with traces of street poet.
Thus, Reid is only the fourth poet to win the overall Costa (or Whitbread as it was known under its earlier sponsor) and of those four, three have been honoured for elegies.
"The striking thing about them, as Andrew Motion says, is that she really does seem to have been a poet, rather than just writing lines that would prefigure the novels she was to write," said Clapp.
The satirical poet Dmitry Bykov even penned verses comparing the effects of war, propaganda and tub-thumping patriotism on the Russian currency and a penis: as the latter gets harder and more excited with Russia's conquests, the former falls to new lows.
This third collection by the Irish poet is full of luminous imagery and sometimes a gentle, almost wistful, touch, as in "Brigie": "When you smile in your sleep / I think of the seal's tail / whispering above the waves, / slipping back again into the deep".
A poet who visits schools can expect their highest sales from children who buy their own signed and dedicated copies.
But where do children go to look for poetry when the poet has left the premises?
Eventually I found a sort of wiggly way out by writing someone else's poetry with Katerina Brac (1985)" – his "translations" of a fictional eastern European poet, the first of several personas he has periodically adopted ever since.
He was a published poet before he set up the imprint and his art had already been shown around LA (you can see his paintings in the 1998 film A Perfect Murder. He played an artist and, of course, created the work for the film).
