"The experiment of poetry, as far as I am concerned, happens when the poem carries you beyond where you could reasonably have expected to go." - Seamus Heaney

"One of our most promising young talents, Jay Bernard writes powerful and sensuous scenes from the metropolis: a teenager flies like a moth, a woman with scissors sings bees. Disturbing, joyous and always surprising.” – Pascale Petit.

"Tempest has forged their own voice, unlike anything else in the mainstream poetry world." - The Independent

Poetry gives people the power to make their voices heard. -- Toni Stuart

All books are merely delayed dust. - George Elliott Clarke

She has the comic's knack of placing a lot of weight on thin-shouldered words, words blurred by common currency which are suddenly brought into sharp focus and don't really want to be. Beyond the laughs there's great poignancy - Observer

I was a long bodice partly sewn to a skirt, a hem picking / up everything

Lucid observations, smart conceits and insight into the contemporary world as a fragmented, self-constructed thing. - The Independent

We are born to bring light / To honour the blessing of each moment / The gift of every life - Malika Ndlovu

'Every time I think a new thought I can smell an old one burning.' Emily Berry

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