SIR: It is a mistake for the Aust­ralian Broadcasting Corporation to decide to cancel Radio National’s weekly program Poetica. Society needs a program dedicated to the highest art form. Overseas poetry conferences attract tens of thousands. Numerous countries honour their poets by naming their squares, buildings and airports after them—and their poems are even displayed for and read by commuters emerging from the Metro. Poetry is the soul of a nation. Churchill’s poetic language arguably saved Western civilisation, and Lincoln’s Gettysburg address (based on Pericles’s Funeral Oration) was powerfully expressed through poetically-charged words. William Carlos Williams said of poetry: “Men…