Trust me, I'm a poet

Oscar Wilde would have made a terrible lawyer. In spite of his rhetorical skills, his reputation for excess and high living would have been incompatible with the concerns of a solicitor's everyday existence. But appearances can be deceptive, and for many lawyers there is reason in rhyme. By Rachel Haliburton

Adam Taylor was prepared for several reactions when he started writing comic poetry about everything from the psychology of wildebeests to hotels in Bournemouth. But when he found himself performing at the prestigious Ledbury Poetry Festival this month in a line-up that included the Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, the response that surprised him most was the assumption that he would now have to quit the law. "People didn't see the two occupations as being compatible," he explains. "They couldn't imagine someone who got up and recited poetry wanting to carry on working at a law firm."

Taylor's experiences hit at the heart of a common perception that lawyers and artists don't belong to the same breed. Imagine, say, Byron submitting his CV to a law firm, and you begin to get the picture. The poet's reputation for radicalism and loose living would have caused too many judges' wigs to stand on end in horror for him to succeed - let alone his incestuous relationship with this half-sister, Augusta; his decision to keep a bear as a pet, and his peculiar fondness for wearing Albanian national costume.

In many ways Byron could be seen as the perfect antithesis to the lawyer. That, at any rate, is the stereotype. And an initial attempt to hunt down other solicitors who break the mould seemed to prove that law firms are unwilling to challenge perceptions about lawyers' anti-poetic tendencies.

At some firms they laughed; at others they questioned the appropriateness of asking their solicitors whether they nurtured poetic urges; and the few that went ahead and made enquiries, drew a blank. However, Taylor, an intellectual property lawyer at the London law firm Withers, firmly believes that the disciplines of his job tie in directly with the skills he needs to write poetry.

His main argument rests on the emphasis both lawyers and poets place on language. He feels, for example, that the precision he has to use when selecting words for legal documents lends itself to the conciseness of expression that characterises his poetry. "Like most litigators", he says, "I have had the experience of having my letters to the opposition being minutely analysed in court by judges and barristers. As a result I choose my words carefully, and don't say anything unless it's absolutely necessary. I find it's exactly the same with poetry.

Taylor's conversion to poetry came two years ago when he heard John Hegley performing, and his understated tone and deadpan comedy comes directly from the tradition of stand-up comic poets. Despite his emphasis on the precision that his words must embody, much of his humour is also derived from double meanings which bring the poems alive but would cause havoc in legal documents...