These hands have Moulded monuments, created crafts, healed hearts. Khosi Xaba, from 'These Hands'

I was a long bodice partly sewn to a skirt, a hem picking / up everything

I believe that in all diverse forms of artistic expression across all countries, there are some sensitivities in common. Esther Phillips

The Laskey effect...is of suddenly sensing that more meaning is inherent in 'ordinary' moments than we were expecting. - Mark Halliday

Good poetry is like effective prayer, it feeds the human spirit, it nourishes, it puts us in touch with forces far greater than ourselves. Lorna Goodison

A poem is a little moment of belief. - Jackie Kay

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

...if poetry is a method of approaching truths, and each of us with a human soul and 'a tongue in oor heids' can make an approach toward a truth, poetry is inherently democratic. - Kathleen Jamie

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