“What's poetry, if it's worth its salt, / but a phrase men can pass from hand to mouth?”

Tough, explicit and wickedly clever - Alan Brownjohn

Poetry is the most elemental of the written arts.

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

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on. Robert Frost

Fuller is a wonderfully skilled craftsman and the grace and elegance of his style is at the service of not only a sharp wit and intelligence, but a great depth of feeling. - Sunday Telegraph

I suppose as I'm explaining myself to others, I'm quintessentially explaining myself to myself. Gerald Stern

My poems are the product of a relationship between a side of my mind which is conscious, alert, educated and manipulative, and a side which is as murky as a primaeval swamp. - Andrew Motion