At my neighbours’ get-together on Christmas Day, with the guests well into their third mimosas of the morning, the conversation turned to creativity. This often happens when I reveal to strangers that I teach grown-ups how to draw and paint and equally often, someone then declares themselves unteachable, so we talk about stick men for a bit, until someone else chips in with, “What are your own paintings like?”

Speared, like a sausage on a cocktail stick, I’ll then mumble something about being a jack-of-all-trades who is too wrapped up with pastiches and passable forgeries to be truly creative, before quickly turning the spotlight onto some other hapless guest.

This time, we’d already established that Roddy, after a day of tracking badgers for DEFRA, was happiest when pottering in his garden (creative) and that Arthur, a prolific author, was presently hammering out a science fiction fantasy about an octopus from another planet (creative with knobs on), so that left only Cara, sitting quietly in her chair, half-hidden by the large and copiously adorned Christmas tree.

“I write poems,” she offered.

“Ah!” said Arthur, “A poet!”

“I’m not a poet,” said Cara, “I just write poems.”

“If you write poems, then you’re a poet!” Arthur insisted.

But I think I know what Cara meant. Poets, to her, when they weren’t languishing on their couches in velvet breeches or fighting duels at the Stars and Garter, were generally louche and tragic; she on the other hand, just wanted to tinker with words and wouldn’t dream of putting her work before the public any more than she’d dream of going for a swim in the Tyrrhenian Sea and drowning. Being a poet, like being an artist, seems like a lifestyle choice to me, too. You can’t call yourself a brain surgeon on a whim, but it seems anyone can call themselves ‘artist’ or ‘poet’ without too much scrutiny and I’m not sure how you qualify at either, to be honest. Success is not an indicator, that’s certain, so I think the verdict has to be left to one’s fellows, not onself.

Despite earning the title of ‘father of us all’ from Matisse and Picasso, even Paul Cézanne was uncomfortable with the term ‘artist’ and worrying that others might think him a ‘fraudulent, old dreamer,’ styled himself as a ‘friend of art’ instead. Art was always too much of a struggle for him to think of himself in any other way.

Being a friend of art is great. One can go to galleries, study art, talk about art, buy art, consort with artists and perhaps even make art. I’ve discovered, in fact, that as a friend of art, one can do just about everything that artists do.

So I suggested to Cara that rather than a poet, she might like to be ‘a friend of poetry’ instead. And then we had another mimosa.

(Names were changed)