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How long should a poem be?

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How long should a poem be?

I think if we look historically at poems, you can say poems can be any length you want them to be. They can be like a tiny little fragment, or if you think of Haiku, very, very short. But then, if you take Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales', it's hundreds of words long. Take 'Beowulf', it's thousands of lines long. You take the great Indian epics, the Ramayana, things like that, thousands of lines long. So I think historically, poems can be absolutely any length you want them to be. The world's shortest poem, I think, was written by somebody called Gyles Brandweth and it goes, "Ode to a goldfish. Oh, wet pet'.

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Michael Rosen

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How long should a poem be?

How long should a poem be?

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How long should a poem be?

How long should a poem be?

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