Vicar taken aback by extremely strange poem (5)
I believe the answer is:
verse
'poem' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'vicar taken aback by extremely strange' is the wordplay.
'vicar' becomes 'rev'.
'taken aback' says the letters should be written backwards.
'by' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'extremely' suggests removing the centre.
'strange' with its centre removed is 'se'.
'rev' back-to-front is 'ver'.
'ver'+'se'='VERSE'
(Other definitions for verse that I've seen before include "Metrical text" , "Poems" , "Part of hymn" , "literary offering" , "Poetry - subdivision of the Bible" .)