He has the gift of epic objectivity: behind his poems we feel not the assertion of his personality, but the actuality of events, the facts and sufferings of history. -- Ted Hughes

His sure hand is apparent in every line: syntax and pulse in the service of experience. -- August Kleinzahler

How perilous is it to choose / not to love the life we're shown? -- 'The Badgers,' Seamus Heaney

Bergin's perceptions are sharp, her senses of history, community, and relationships deep and acute, and her technical control over language and form is assured and graceful - Tower Poetry

Memorable poetry of sustained lyrical power - Peter McDonald, TLS

Wheatley's is a poetry of displacement, uncertainty and sheer possibility ... Stimulating, resourceful and often very funny - The Guardian

The greatest lyric poet of the twentieth century. Charles Causley

He looked upon the garish day with such a wistful eye; the man had killed the thing he loved, and so he had to die. - Oscar Wilde 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol'

Slowly and sadly we laid him down, from the field of his fame fresh and gory; we carved not a line, and we raised not a stone - but left him alone with his glory. - Charles Wolfe, 'The Burial of Sir John Moore After Corunna'

How very mean a thing is a Duke; From all his ill-got honours flung, turned to that dirt from whence he sprung. - Jonathan Swift 'A satirical elegy on the death of a late famous general'

Dense yet taut poems, grounded in an everyday enriched by an intelligent, idiosyncratic awareness -- Carrie Etter