In the car on the way home from a gig with Lemn Sissay we both exploded into a bout of indignation: Why is television afraid of poetry? What's the matter with them? Poetry fills clubs, halls and venues. Poets and poems can talk to the deepest feelings and to the silliest. It can be like stand-up or rock music. It can be intimate, it can be pubic. It's ideal for the small screen. And yet, they don't risk it.

Yes, there have been great exceptions: Tony Harrison's poetry documentaries including his magnificent V; biographies of poets - many years ago, a superb one on John Clare; the occasional South Bank Show ... but there's no question, TV people are nervous about it. It's as if they're twitchy about what the cameras will do when the poem is running. Or is it that they remember the humiliation of having to answer questions about poetry at school? Or perhaps they think it has to be reverential or devotional.

Poetry on TV doesn't have to be like a newscast with someone staring blankly at the camera, pretending they're not reading from an autocue. It doesn't have to present poets as if we should worship them. And it certainly doesn't have to set you GCSE questions. It can be shot anywhere, anytime: as part of a gig or a poetry jam; outside on the move, under a tree, in the street, on the balcony of a flat, in a bedroom, in a swimming pool, anywhere.

So, here's a proposal for the BBC: you spend millions developing these non-ad ads, telling us to watch this or that BBC channel. Why not spend hundreds instead of millions, grabbing this or that poem and putting it on between programmes? It can be a mix of modern poets and performances of poems from the past. One of the best readings of any poem I've ever seen was Germaine Greer reading a Shakespeare sonnet. Surprise us: Lenny Henry reading Shelley; Lily Allen reading Sylvia Plath.

All you need to do, is have a two-person guerrilla production team to go about harvesting poets and readers of poems. With cheapo DV cameras, it would be a cinch.

This coverage would provide the context (or do I mean pretext?) for the Beeb to commission longer, more thought-out programmes on poets past and present. Peter Ackroyd's programme about Wordsworth came out of the Open University and was tucked away late, late, late in the schedules, but it was an example of what can be done. Melvyn Bragg's profile of Tony Harrison was carefully and sensitively done. Dig around and find poets and themes that will stun and amaze: why not a programme about erotic poetry? Or the poetry that people write and read at funerals? What about the traditions of the office ballad? Moments in history that have stirred people to write political verse like the Spanish Civil War. What about satirical verse and parodies? There's a fantastic tradition there.

Inventive producers could find all sorts of ways of presenting programmes like these, using back projection, location filming, archive and the like.

And many poets these days are as experienced at performing as stand-up comedians. Trust them. Shoot them when they're in front of audiences. And if we can have a Jules Holland show, why can't we have a late night poetry show? Or even mix it up with poetry, jazz and song?

All it needs is a TV producer with the confidence to sell the idea and do it. Are you there?