“Olds writes “poetry more faithful to the felt truth of reality than any prose could be.” – Richard Wakefield.

I don't want to be one of those ivory tower writers; I want to affect people's lives.

I am a desperate man who demands to connect...who denounces the dullness of money and status...who will not bow down to acolayed or success - 'i am the strange hero of hunger', Billy Childish

Are words no more than waving, wavering flags? - 'The right word', Imtiaz Dharker

The act of writing is a process of curiosity and discovery, with the unconscious mind leading, and everything focussing on finding the right concrete details. Matthew Sweeney

Schmidt is always a stringent poet, never shy of painful truth - Helen Dunmore

A large, ironic Whitman of the industrial heartland - Edward Hirsch

Paying attention - listening - to one kind of complexity tells us something about the complexity of experience in general. Fiona Sampson

Go for it, petal. Nothing's as real as what you write. (from Writing to Onegin, Ruth Padel)

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