The essay on the writing of poetry is taken from parts of my textbook, The Writer's Dictionary, Gary Langford, UWS Press. I wrote the textbook for usage of students in Creative Writing subjects, which progressed from Bachelor to doctorate level at my university in Sydney. The book was reprinted in different editions four times in five years.
My students came from many cultures where at least half of them were from homes where English was a second language. Of course, once the passion for writing is there, poets can be from anywhere and any background.
Writing rubbish is easy.
Writing well is not easy.
In most cases, you need to spend hours on your work to make it work. Do not try to write a great piece of writing the moment you have a go, giving up when it reads as flat as an uncooked curry or tandoori. A rarity is a poet who does not change a poem when it is reprinted from one book to another, or one magazine to another.
We are all great fiddlers, are we not where our orchestra is all that is around us?
Great writers can be less than brilliant spellers but have a fascination for words and what they can do, along with the layout or oral form in poetry.
Of course, the more you write, the better your feeling for language and shape, as I suggest in the major piece from my book, adapted for Kritya below.

Poet.... Poetry....Prose poetry....Poetry Personification....Visual Poetry

1 A poet is a writer who expresses imagination in intense language through imagery and form; who writes for others to read, understanding the importance of words, form and effect where they are used to move people, other than going to their car and driving away; who writes with emotion and intensity of expression where the fewer the words the greater the power of language must be to work.
Poets are raiders of the inarticulate, expressing what is inside to make what is outside more bearable. A poet has the language when others have lost it, or they never had it in the first place, sometimes shown by, what the hell is this when they read your work, or in education, that's not real learning.
One of my poems from my collection, Jesus the Galilee Hitch-hiker starts off as follows:

Drunken, alone, in debt and book less,
Wife leaving him, children not speaking,
Car wrecked, the house of poetry burnt down.
He prayers there is life in the underground,
Finding 12 painted on every step.
12, he shouts,
There must be more of us left than this.

2 Poetry is the intense expression of feeling, not always distinguishable from fiction, particularly imagistic fiction where the only variation is form, resulting in one of the major differences between two of the main areas of writing being word-intensity in one (poetry) and less in the other (fiction).
In the fog, try to catch poetry, try to breed lines from any ether in your life.
Exercise. Test a verse you have written by taking away the form and running the lines together to see if it's more chopped up prose than poetry, i.e. where you can still read it where the form becomes irrelevant. This is a common ailment of beginner writers who think they have written a poem, purely due to popping the words into a verse form. Wrong. Poetry is an elevated form of expression of thoughts and emotion in metrical form, rather than only verse.
Poetry also relates to lyrics, music and dance as lyric poems were once sung to the lyre in Greek mythology, or the mythology of other cultures. In other words, poetry is the nearest writing form to music. Language is just as important a musical instrument to play with as a guitar, a flute, or any other one of musical expression of emotion and belief.
Performance poets cross the bridge between music and poetry, such as the American poet Robert Bly who used an ancient Greek instrument in his poetry performances.
Exercise. Write a poem to music, whether song lyrics or not. Or take lyrics and adjust them to yourself as the music plays, whether on radio, tape or CD. If they are generalizations, try to personalize them and see if it has greater effect for you.

3 Prose poetry merges two separate forms of writing, showing there is also a bridge between these different major forms of expression, something I have enjoyed in my writing, reflected in the fact that prose poetry is one of the formats in half of my books of poetry, as well as appearing in most of my novels. The form is not as contemporary as many people believe. The French poet, Baudelaire, used this form in the 19th century.
 You might also consider pattern poetry that creates the mood in the shape, such has the 12 pattern poems Dylan Thomas, the Welsh poet, used.
 One of mine is a poem in dialogue, taken from my collection, Love at the Traffic Lights:

What would you do if I died tomorrow?
Write a poem for you to read.
How can I read a poem if I am dead?
Like you do now - with great difficulty.
Would you grieve for me?
Absolutely.
How long? How much?
That depends.
On what?
Whether your poem is unforgettable.
Prose poetry can be a vignette, a brief story, a sketch of language. The principal difference is length and form, different to fiction and poetry where the principal form uses lines from one side of the page to the other, or verses. The narrative element in poetry is often built around one incident compared to a few incidents in fiction. There is no hard boundary between these two forms of self-expression. If you do try it, or you have done so, you will know the key is enjoyment. Like most forms of writing, if you don't enjoy it, don't use it.

4 Poetry Personification is where you select an object or creature so they represent humanity, or a spiritual form you wish to write about. I have used this form of self-expression where I have personified love, chocolates, cats, skiing (a visual poem), dolphins, dogs and death. The most familiar one I have used is poetry on earth, air, fire and water. I wrote one on dolphins due to my daughter's interest with them. The poem ends as follows:

In the morning she goes to school,
wearing a dolphin around her neck,
light as air, sweet of breath.

A dolphin catcher is sent to the school,
unable to net either of them,
believing he is having hallucinations.

The dolphin dances with the small girl,
asking her to marry him.
Together, they float off in the rain.

5 Visual Poetry is where what you see is what you get. These poems can be produced by the use of cut-ups/computer art/traced object shape or a photocopier where the key with the shape may well be the title that goes with it. For example, think of a title that goes with an empty page, such as Knowledge or a single piece of punctuation, such as War that goes with a large exclamation mark on the right hand side or a number of them in the shape of a skull.
  It is a developing poetic form on the inter-net. Keep in mind visual art has often gone with poetry in many languages and cultures, such as in the English culture, the poetry of William Blake (1757-1827). At its best, it is a dynamic form. At its worst, it is banal art.
  The visual poems I use mix the forms, yet also reflect I am stronger with shape than I am with computer art. An example of my shape poetry where the words reflect the subject is Modern Diseases
Eat
Eat
Eat
Eat
Eat
Eat
EatEatEatEatEatEatEatEat
EatEatEatEatEatEatEatEat
Fat
Fat
Fat
Fat
Fat
Fat
All