“I want these poems to help people to practise empathy”

“Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art.” – Thomas Hardy

Valerie Gillies writes like the wind and jinks like a hare in the fields of language - The Scotsman

A haunting music full of subtlety of thought and religious echoes. -- Charles Bainbridge, The Guardian

Joyous, brilliant and moving -- Costa Prize judges

He has the gift of epic objectivity: behind his poems we feel not the assertion of his personality, but the actuality of events, the facts and sufferings of history. -- Ted Hughes

He stands among the indispensable poets of modern and contemporary Scotland ? Douglas Dunn

"This is sanity speaking, with a mask of tragedy pulled up from its face. This is a stunning poet arguing with the failing authority of her culture, the whole Silk Road curled up and hissing by her feet." Valzhyna Mort

Lee Harwood is one of Britain's best poets and best kept secrets. -- John Ashbery

Poetry is our human love of metaphor. We see one thing and think something else - 'Travels in Peru', Geoffrey Lehmann