Poetry Is Music From The Place You Are Born – Unknown

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

A tune that one has once heard and liked [that] seems to haunt the mind and will not be dismissed until entirely mastered.

Joyous, brilliant and moving -- Costa Prize judges

Yaa de Villiers' silence-smashing poems (in this manner reminiscent of Carol Ann Duffy's The World's Wife) are sensitive, unafraid to be erotic, sometimes tragic, and always irreverent - Tolu Ogunlesi, Wasafiri magazine

And die of nothing but a rage to live

Woman! too long degraded, scorned, opprest; / O born to rule in partial Law's despite, / Resume thy native empire o'er the breast! Anna Laetitia Barbauld, 'The Rights of Women'

Among the finest of our poets. - Melvyn Bragg

The verse flexes muscle after muscle...The writing...can hover and dance. It has genuine grace. - George Szirtes