HERE'S A confession. A confession which will lose your reporter a great deal of cred in some very influential quarters. Margaret Galvin may well arrange to have me assassinated. Eamonn Wall will doubtless snub me in the street. But the secret can be contained no longer. Deep breath. Here goes...

I have never bought a book of poetry in my life. Not once.

It's true. I have never read poetry for pleasure during my adult years. Thrillers – love 'em. Detective stories – great. Novels – can't get enough. Travel books – I'm all the way up the Amazon in my mind's eye with the piranhas nibbling at my toes. But poetry is nowhere to be found on this man's bedside locker.

The last poem I remember enjoying was a childhood ditty called 'The Fairies' that went: 'Up the airy mountain / Down the rushy glen / We dare not go a-hunting / For fear of little men.' Those lines are still engraved on this middle-aged heart almost half a century down the line.

I only know that it is called 'The Fairies' after a quick scout on the internet while preparing this column. Fairies? In my fevered boyish imagination, the 'little men' were more like an elite commando unit for warriors of low stature, a sort of cross between a band of elves and the SAS.

Courtesy of Google, I now learn that the jolly doggerel, memorised in national school as a senior infant, was penned by someone called William Allingham. Add this fact to your store of useless knowledge. There is no extra fee.

Poetry! Argh! Somewhere around the time an over-eager English teacher tried to persuade me that metaphysical John Donne was somehow important, I got thick. I logged off poetry, probably for life. The only possible exception has been Ogden Nash, the American responsible for such witty insights into the human condition as: 'I think that I shall never see / A billboard lovely as a tree.'

I still refuse to know what metaphysical means – if, indeed it means anything at all. The only way to slip poetry under my radar is to disguise it as a song lyric. I should stress of course that I am happy to accept that Séamus Heaney is Ireland's greatest living writer – just don ' t expect me to open one of his slim volumes.

Why the confession? Well, you see, I have been digesting the results of the Costa book awards. Literary-minded readers will already be aware that one of our own was beaten to the top prize. Colm Tóibín, he of the impressively high brow, was passed over in favour of a poet called Christopher

Reid. As he is a poet, I had of course never heard of Reid before. And then he goes and pips poor Colm at the post.

The thing about the Costas is that they are supposed, at least in part, to be an effort to find the most enjoyable book of the year past. It should have been a shooin...

In the green corner, all the way from Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, let's play the ' Rocky' theme for Colm 'Tiger' Tóibín as he writes with relish about love. Go, champ, go! Knock him dead, Toby!

And in the poet's corner, all the way from Hull, with one of his poems about the death of his wife, let's give a polite round of applause to Christopher ' No, Not Superman' Reid.

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. In the search for the most enjoyable book of the year, you may pick Tóibín on transatlantic romance in an easily readable novel, or you may opt for Reid waxing poetic (argh!) on bereavement. Obvious choice, really.

The Costa judges made their decision without fear, favour or irony but they cannot persuade this reporter to break the poetry averse habit of a lifetime and actually buy 'The Scattering'. Tóibín's 'Brooklyn', on the other hand, is a must-have.

To find the great man slumming on the fringes of Mills & Boon country is a delight. Here is an author who spends part of every year giving creative writing workshops at one of the US's Ivy League universities. If his students follow his example, they may as well set their literary sights on Barbara Cartland as Dostoevsky.

There is clearly an element of schizophrenia in the Wexford writing set. Enniscorthy's finest does not shy away from letting his romantic side show. Meanwhile, John Banville has a black alter ego who pens the sort of crime fiction that will never, ever, ever win him the Man Booker.

Just one observation about ' Brooklyn'. The heroine, who comes from a very real Enniscorthy and buys her paper in Godfrey's newsagent before decamping to 1950s New York, is a wimp. All the interesting things in the book (of which there are lots) happen to her rather than at her bidding. The woman is incapable of taking an initiative. In the end, she takes the right decision – but for all the wrong reasons. I can hardly wait for the sequel.

- David Medcalf