All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. - A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe

In the face of loss - human, natural, temporal - McQueen finds salvation in language. Often her work is about artistic endeavour itself: the desire to freeze time, the realisation that this is impossible - Sarah Quigley

A dynamic reader, Eggleton has a rapid-fire delivery that releases a torrent of images, some startling, ugly, or funny - Greg O'Brien

A great work by an Englishman is like a great battle won by England. It is an unfading bay tree. Gerard Manley Hopkins

The blood jet is poetry,/ There is no stopping it. - 'Kindness', Sylvia Plath (written 1st February 1963)

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

There is something white stars say to you/and you throw off all the night to hear the sound of falling snow. - 'White Noise', Kevin Crossley-Holland

There is no gaudiness in her poetry; instead the reader is aware of a generosity of spirit which allows the poems' subjects their own unbullied reality. - The Listener

All poems are rash acts. - Allen Curnow