The most remarkable phenomenon of the English poetic scene ... has been the advent, or perhaps I should say the irruption, of Gavin Ewart - Philip Larkin.

If death still comes / we'll strike a pose / and hold our breath / until he goes - Kevin Ireland

Dorothea Smartt reveals a poetic intelligence and maturity of form and content which definitely locates her among the best of her generation of poets. - Carol Boyce Davies

The kind of poetry that imbues the everyday, the tarnished and burnished, with the possibilities of the transcendent - The Times

Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand. - Ezra Pound

I believe even 5-year-olds can get something from a Shakespearean sonnet...as long as you DON'T tell them, 'This is really hard.' - Rita Dove

What troubles me is a sense that so many things lovely and precious in our world seem to be dying out. Perhaps poetry will be the canary in the mine-shaft warning us of what's to come. - Galway Kinnell

In my poetry I give primacy to the breath. For me it is the way the poem breathes that gives it form. - Penelope Shuttle

Not a graceful mind... a mind of grace, an altogether different and higher thing - Theodore Roethke