AMONG the Celts the poet was one of the most admired and feared members of society.

The satire of a poet could bring about misfortune and even death to those who had wronged him.

It was believed that a bard's poetic inspiration was a gateway to the 'otherworld' and that poets had the power of prophecy.

Such beliefs are shared by indigenous cultures throughout the world - the tribal shaman who goes into a trance and reports his experience through song, stories and poetry.

Quite often the poet used ritual or meditation to achieve inspiration. Scottish Gaelic poets of the 17th century would lie in a completely darkened room for days with a stone on their stomach to induce a trance-like state.

In Celtic Ireland there was a ritual known as tarb feis, which translates as 'bull sleep; whereby a poet would be wrapped in a bull's hide to help him achieve prophetic insights.

However, despite this impressive heritage our society has sidelined poets - they are no longer regarded as visionaries who can bring insights from the otherworld, prophesise or cause an enemy to die with a satirical quatrain.

Walk into a pub and recite a couple of sarcastic couplets at a drunken prat pumped up with steroids ranting about his favourite football team and see who walks out in one piece.

Of course poets do feature in our society, but for many they have become slightly ridiculous figures.

In the populist mindset poetry is the domain of men who speak with pompous lisps and women with whining, affected accents.

It is perceived as the preserve of an elite of academics, although a couple of select lines will be dusted down by politicians on solemn state occasions or to mourn the passing of a well-loved actor.

No US president dares set foot in Ireland without quoting a couple of lines of Seamus

Heaney or WB Yeats.

In fact, the passing of Heaney last year and the virtual state funeral that he was given has, in a roundabout way, highlighted how poetry has been marginalised.

He was without doubt Ireland's best-known contemporary poet and his death drew accolades from throughout the island and its various traditions.

But, you got the impression that many of those queueing up to sing Heaney's praises were trotting out tributes by rote and

desperately hoping that no-one asked them what they actually thought of his poetry.

In many ways Heaney was quite a safe poet to admire. There is no doubt that his verse had a rich musicality, which became more apparent when you heard him recite it in his soft, south Derry lilt.

However, while he is credited with trying to articulate a response to the conflict in the north, he always seemed to hold it at a distance, without directly engaging.

Compare him to the much more visceral and gritty verse of the west Belfast poet Padraic Fiacc whose sparse, stripped-back poems engage with the violence of the 1970s in an often appallingly blunt but effective way that combines modernity with a knowing nod to his Celtic predecessors.

However, Fiacc's treatment of the Troubles was too raw for many. In his poem Glass Grass he wrote: "My fellow poets call my poems 'cryptic, crude, distasteful, brutal, savage, bitter'." In some ways he should be a model for how poetry too can be relevant again, to shake off the respectable veneer and become dangerous and marginal while drawing on a rich vein of tradition.

Poetry needs a to undergo a punk-like revolution.

Official recognition or academic acclaim in no way diminishes those poets who have achieved it and some of our 'established' poets are among the most subversive - that is the power of poetry, you can say things or imply them with an image or clashing of words that you could not say in prose.

But like every art form, in poetry there is good, bad, mediocre and, as Robert Graves used to say, god-awful - and there is a fair-share of the god-awful in Irish poetry.

However, there is also interesting stuff going on at the margins, coming out from small presses like the north Belfast-based Lapwing Publications or in journals such as the Limerick-based Revival or Crannog in Galway city.

And, in the true spirit of punk, the internet provides a rich source of ezines, blogs and websites publishing poetry, criticism and debate.

Somewhere not too far from where you are sitting as you read this someone may be lying wrapped in a bull hide and waiting for the otherworldly image that sparks the first line of a poem. t.bailie@irishnews.com

* Anita Robinson is away.

* VISCERAL AND GRITTY: Padraic Fiacc with his book Sea: Sixty Years of Poetry and portraits of the Markets poet in Bittles bar Belfast