F ollowing my article last week about the possible future prospects of the bardic and poet laureate traditions, lo and behold, Gloucestershire's Jay Ramsay has been nominated as a possible new poet laureate when Andrew Motion stands down in May.

Mark Lindsey-Earley, the Grand Bard of Exeter, put the idea to me that bardic and laureate traditions could be merged in the future, even with the new laureate one day being selected from the Druidic movement, as the bardic and laureate roles have a common origin in the court poet or bard.

Mark's ideas are timely because, for the first time, the public are being consulted, through the Department for Culture, Media and Sport about who the new laureate should be.

Jay, of Stroud, who is a psychotherapist as well as a poet, has been nominated to Andy Burnham, the Secretary for Culture, Media and Sport, by fellow poet, novelist and former Bard of Bath Kevan Manwaring who says of Jay: "He is, for me, the best living ambassador for poetry in Britain, besides being a very fine poet, and I feel he would shine in the post and take it so much further."

Jay, who runs poetry courses and edits anthologies of new poetry, has strong links with the Druidic and Bardic movements, of which he describes himself as an "honorary member". He has contributed to a bardic correspondence course run by the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids.

"The whole bardic aspect is so important because it holds something of the soul of poetry which is missing in a lot of modern poetry," Jay told me. "I have to admit I have wanted to have this opportunity for years and have in many ways been half-consciously preparing for it through all the public commissioned work I've done.

"I feel very strongly that this position is an honour and an invitation to do something really significant for poetry on a national level, and especially in the communities that make up our nation, as opposed to a specialised poetry that projects its ambitions on to a handful of publishers, and a well-worn circuit of literary festivals largely orchestrated by, or in deference to, those publishers.

"Poetry needs to be more than an elected club with vetted members if it is to truly speak to and be for people."

Contemporary British poetry is something that Jay has worked hard to assert for decades, since the Angels of Fire Festivals of New Poetry of which he was part as young poet in the 1980s in London.

"I feel its crucial to teach poetry as something magical and inspirational, not merely 'socially relevant' or as the preserve of school syllabuses or academia.

"In our time, poetry also holds the potential for being taught as a path of self-knowledge, as much a 'spiritual path', in fact, as any other path and, as such, a path of initiation into the mystery of life itself.

"Poetry intrinsically heals the psyche, as psychotherapy also attempts to – it still needs to be presented this way, within a new paradigm which also brings art and healing into a single configuration of the artist-healer."

Jay's latest work, Places of Truth, his 28th publication, is available from publishers Awen, of Bath (visit www.awenpublications.co.uk), and was launched in the city last week at a special showcase of poets and storytellers. In November, Jay is organising the first Stroud Festival of Poetry, Music and Storytelling.

* A bard is a poet, songwriter or wordsmith in the Celtic tradition. The most well-known expression of this is probably the Welsh National Eisteddfod and the Cornish Bards- Gorseth Kernow. It has its roots in the Druid orders and societies popular in the 18th century which claimed to be a revival of a much older movement dating back to the original Druids of the Iron Age who themselves may have been a continuation of an older shamanic order contemporary with megalithic monuments such as Stonehenge.