WILLIAM Shakespeare walks into a pub and orders a pint of beer.

“I’m not serving you,” says the barman.

“Why not?” says Will.

“Because you’re Bard.”

It may not be the funniest joke in the world, but it is probably the best one you are going to get from me, and it does show that poetry can be fun.

And that’s useful because, like prawns and Cliff Richard, after all these years I am still trying to decide whether I like it or not.

But there has never been a better time to make your mind up, thanks to the Poetry Swindon Festival 2016, which is on now and continues until the weekend.

Last Thursday I went along to its opening event, called Poems Aloud, which is a clever title, and discovered it involved lots of people coming along and reading either poems they had written themselves or been inspired by.

The theme of this year’s festival is Dada, the artistic movement founded on nonsense, which also spawned the even greater nonsense that is Dada poetry, but thankfully not all the poetry in the festival is Dada, so most of it makes sense.

And it was fun. Even though hardly any of it rhymed.

I have to be truthful and say I am one of those people who still wonders if it counts as poetry if it doesn’t rhyme.

That’s not to say it isn’t thought-provoking, damned clever and even moving, because sometimes poetry — whether it rhymes or not — can be all of those things.

But I am still trying to work out why they go to the bother of arranging it in verses if it doesn’t rhyme.

The way I look at it: if it doesn’t require putting into verses, there is another word for it that is more appropriate than ‘poetry’, and it’s this one: ‘writing’.

Now I don’t want you to run away with the idea that I am coming down against poetry, because if there is one thing that I noticed at the festival it was how much everybody in the audience liked it.

The smiles on their faces were the giveaway.

Every now and then there was a serious or even a sad poem, so the smiles were dropped temporarily, but they soon returned again, and everybody went away happy at the end.

That sounds like a pretty good endorsement to me, and it was clear that virtually everybody there had already been converted to the faith, so reading, writing and reciting poetry had become a big part of their lives.

But some other things impressed me even more than their smiles.

The first thing was the dedication of the people who organise it, several of whom I know.

They are not paid to do it, but spend half the year planning it, and then, when it comes around, it completely takes over their lives — this year for 11 days.

It’s because of people like them that there is so much to do in Swindon, even though some — usually those who choose not to get out much — still like to spout on about the town being boring.

I still haven’t made up my mind about poetry, if I am honest, but the point of the festival is not so much to provide us with entertainment as to give us an opportunity to see what it’s all about.

So give it a try. It may not be quite your cup of tea, but you may well end up with a smile on your face.

And as a chap who fancied himself as a poet once said... all’s well that ends well.