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

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

God is the perfect poet.

In these times, we should be glad of this voice. - Kate Clanchy, The Guardian

Good poetry is like effective prayer, it feeds the human spirit, it nourishes, it puts us in touch with forces far greater than ourselves. Lorna Goodison

I am a poet who is a woman, not a woman poet. - Ruth Fainlight

Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard. - Anne Sexton

A poem is a little moment of belief. - Jackie Kay

...the communication of the dead/is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living. - from Part 1 of 'Little Gidding', T. S. Eliot

There is no gaudiness in her poetry; instead the reader is aware of a generosity of spirit which allows the poems' subjects their own unbullied reality. - The Listener

We were testing the range of the human voice - 'The Shout', Simon Armitage