Not only rich music, an easy lyricism, but also grit, and earthy honesty, a willingness to be vulnerable and clean. - Gwendolyn Brooks

Poetry matters because it is a tool for helping us to discover who we are. As individuals, as Caribbean peoples, as citizens of the world. Olive Senior

A jet-age Tennyson - London Review of Books

And here is love / like a tinsmith's scoop / sunk past its gleam / in the meal-bin - 'Mossbawn Sunlight', Seamus Heaney

You cannot fake anything if you are trying to write serious poetry. - Elizabeth Jennings

Why are we frightened of the word for love? - 'Language teaching: naming', Jenny Joseph

What happens with me is quite often I start with a memory, mix it with observations of people I know and then mix in a bit of 'What if...?' - Michael Rosen

We were testing the range of the human voice - 'The Shout', Simon Armitage

If I didn't write poetry I think I'd explode. - Charles Causley

Young or old / What was I but the story told / By an unageing one? (Kathleen Raine, from 'Ah, many, many are the dead...')