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

There's something in me that insists it sings / Freely, for nothing, the lovely, lonely art / Called poetry, an art you understand. (from 'Venezuela' by Douglas Dunn)

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

John Fairfax's poems return us to the important sources: spells they braid linger and haunt like sweetness of a wood after rain. - Adam Thorpe

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

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

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