Sir: On the popularity of modern poetry (Ancient and modern, 13 December) G.K.

Chesterton, as so often, had the last word.

Different critics will have different views about new poems, he says in his essay 'The Middleman in Poetry', but none will claim that 'if a blind man with a dog will go about singing them in Surbiton and Streatham, it is at all probable that ten suburbs will contend for the honour of being his birthplace', as happened with Homer.

Tim Hudson Chichester, West Sussex