[Mark McDonnell]

It's hard to take you seriously, N, because your logic is so ridiculous.

Let's, just for argument's sake, say that Shakespeare is the "best poet ever" and that this means there is no point in writing because nobody could ever match him. This seems to be your position. A very odd one for a member of a poetry workshop but there it is.

Presumably, by this logic, you must think that Milton, Blake, Keats, Dickinson, Eliot, Plath (etc etc until today) should not have bothered writing either, since they came after Shakespeare. So you would like the entire history of poetry to have stopped soon after the early 17th century.

Here's where it gets really silly.

Before Shakespeare began his writing career, presumably somebody else must have been "the best poet ever". Chaucer maybe? So, by your logic Shakespeare himself should not have bothered writing because, well, how could he ever match Chaucer?

And before Chaucer...

Do you see how reductio ad absurdum all this is?

Personally, when I write a poem I don't see myself as in competition with anyone. Shakespeare is wonderful but dozens of writers, and individual poems, have given me as much joy and magic. I strive, perhaps, to be somewhere in their company and, importantly, something beyond my control makes me love the act of creation itself. The idea that there is one unattainable peak is beyond silly. It's interesting, I think, that there is no consensus on who the second best poet is. That's because there's nothing scientific or objective about this ranking endeavour. Shakespeare just happens to have been placed at the top because humans have a natural tendency to want to create hierarchies.

If you must write, you will write. It's that simple.