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

'here I am, on the edge of animation, / a dream, a dance, a fantastic construction'. Moniza Alvi

I understood that my words could be used as a weapon. James Matthews

And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans, my heart gives you love. - Walt Whitman 'Dirge For Two Veterans'

Here lies, whom hound did ne'er pursue, nor swifter greyhound follow, whose foot ne'er tainted morning dew, nor ear heard huntsman's halloo'. - William Cowper 'Epitaph on a hare'

Strands of autobiography, a deeply sensuous ecology of place, historical narratives; the inner world of imagination and the often difficult realities of the postcolonial nation are interwoven in McWatt's bold but carefully worked out architecture. Peepal Tree

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. Percy Bysshe Shelley, 'Ode to a Skylark'

The best reading of a poem involves a simultaneous engagement of the eye and ear.

My subject is War and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity. Wilfred Owen

The imagination is not a State: it is the Human existence itself. William Blake

Sitting around an old table/they drew lines across the map/dividing the place/I would call my country. Choman Hardi 'Lausanne, 1923'

The kind of poetry that imbues the everyday, the tarnished and burnished, with the possibilities of the transcendent - The Times