
Absoultely right - anyone can claim to be a poet and that is a personal belief - everyone else might hate their work, but the person is still a poet in their own imagination.
I would say I am a poet, not because I've ever had anything published and reviewed or anything, just due to the fact that I have an impulse to express my thoughts in verse, and that's enough of a sufficient explaination for me.
Others will doubtless disagree and say that unless you have been published and recognised publically as a poet you are not one.
However, Homer was perhaps never written down certainly never 'published' in any modern sense in his lifetime and he's still a poet; one of the greatest - not that I am comparing myself by any means to the sublime genius of Homer, just pointing out that one doesn't have to be well known and celebrated to be a poet.
"Oh what a misery it is to have an intellect in splints".