Blame Oprah.

Last month, the woman who has become the world's most famous talk-show host/philanthropist/actress/producer/car-giver hosted her annual "Favourite Things for Christmas" episode where she not only revealed her pick of the best gifts for the festive season, but also rewarded her audience (this year made up of 300 Hurricane Katrina volunteers) with thousands of dollars worth of gifts.

This year's list featured, among other things, video iPods, diamond watches, bubble baths, designer handbags and, you guessed it, a particular brand of caramel popcorn. And such is the power of an Oprah recommendation that within hours of the show going to air, the popcorn and everything else on the list began to sell out.

Winfrey's power to make household names out of obscure products merely by holding them in her hand and giving them her seal of approval has been dubbed the "Oprah effect". Research teams have studied it, booksellers rejoice in it and manufacturers dream about it. An endorsement of your product by Ms O can guarantee sales into the hundreds of thousands around the world. For authors lucky enough to be selected for her book club, it could feasibly set them up for life.

But before you start rolling your eyes and muttering rude things about me, about popcorn, about the increasing power of TV and film to dictate our tastes, hold on. Because it's not just popcorn we're talking about, it's poetry too. Where our high school teachers tried and failed in the past, TV shows and films are increasingly connecting audiences with great poems. Just like caramel popcorn, when a great poem features in a movie or on TV these days, audiences respond.

What was the most talked about part of the Frasier finale last month? Not the birth of Daphne and Niles's son nor the fond tear-jerker farewell to Marty Krane's hideous green chair. It was Frasier's reciting of a poem as he sat in his Seattle radio booth for the final time. That poem was Tennyson's Ulysses:

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And tho' we are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

It was a special moment as the conservative, career-obsessed Frasier Krane reflected on the need in life to take risks and grab chances. A precursor to his decision to fly to Chicago - not San Francisco - to be with his new love, Charlotte. The inclusion of that poem led me, and thousands of other Frasier fans, to search for the complete poem on the Internet and, in turn, reacquaint ourselves with poetry. I've been logging on to poemhunter.com ever since.

Not that Frasier was charting virgin territory. Movie fans around the world discovered poet W. H. Auden after his poem Funeral Blues featured in the 1994 comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral and his Collected Poems which features Funeral Blues enjoyed a huge burst in popularity.

Sales of the works of two great poets, Elizabeth Bishop and E. E. Cummings, doubled after the release of the movie In Her Shoes last month. The film features actress Cameron Diaz reading works by the American poets as her character, Maggie, struggles to overcome her dyslexia. The scenes featuring Diaz reciting One Art by Bishop and I Carry Your Heart With Me by Cummings are arguably the film's most memorable moments.

To quote the wisest of bears Winnie the Pooh: "Poetry and Hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get you. And all you can do is go where they can find you."