David Whyte's contribution to the Ledbury Poetry Festival on Friday evening was an impressive tour de force.

His off-the-cuff delivery was slick and practised and larded with eye-contact, like that of a passionate preacher or business guru, and I was not always sure whether his message was urging me to pursue spiritual or material goals.

Whichever, I was certainly being urged and, as someone resistant to being preached at or given the hard sell, I found myself wondering who is this guy who presumes to tell me how to live? Nonetheless, Whyte's use of language was deft and his presentation was direct, magnetic and refreshingly free of introspective mumbling.

He also had a clever trick of repeating salient lines within the poems, sometimes more than once. This was his novel way of overcoming what he sees as a perennial problem of poetry readings, namely the difficulty of comprehending complex notions when one hasn't time to reflect, to cast the eye back, before the next notion arrives.

It worked to a point, but after a while it began to irritate, for the downside was the interruption of those essential poetic attributes: rhythm and euphony. David Whyte says his poems "create a door". I was not tempted to enter, but I enjoyed peering through the window.

John Rushby-Smith.