You’re getting at something that’s been gnawing at the edges of creative communities for years: the slow homogenisation of voice in service of safety. What starts as shared inspiration too often calcifies into mimicry, not because poets lack originality, but because the culture rewards what’s already been approved.

Your image of poetry written under safety nets is vivid. It conjures the sense of performance without danger, creation without risk — and as you know, that’s not poetry. That’s product. When the work becomes indistinguishable, it stops being felt. It becomes a kind of aesthetic wallpaper: pleasant, maybe, but forgettable. And poetry, at its best, should be neither.

Groupthink makes me think of violence, not loud or obvious, but erosive. It sands down voice, cadence, daring. The poet starts writing not to say something urgent, but to be retweeted by peers. And as you’ve pointed out, once everyone is working from the same emotional palette and structure, originality becomes an accident rather than a goal.

So thank you for naming it! For challenging it! And for writing not under a safety net, but on the high wire where poetry actually lives… where something could fall, but something might also fly.