The two poems I've chosen today show some of the range of poems I am sent at the Daily Echo.

Poems can be personal, dealing with real-life relationships and problems as Jon Purden's touching poem 'A Simple Wish' shows. He wrote in his accompanying letter that he has been having a really difficult time lately and is using poetry to help him through it.

At times of trouble we often turn to poetry and can find that reading and writing it can help us understand ourselves and our experience better.

The trick is to make the poem transcend one's own experience and speak to other people, and Jon's poem definitely touched me.

Poems can also deal with wider issues. The Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, has to write poems that aren't personal at all, but about affairs of state or the royal family. But the secret of these is the same. You have to give the poem an emotional content that speaks to other people. Bill Drayton's poem 'The Final Voyage' has a passion that speaks to the reader.

These two poems are featured in the Daily Poem section of the site.

You can read more readers' poems in next week's Creative Special when the winners of the poetry competition are revealed.