A poet confident in her mastery of the medium -- J.M. Coetzee

Vain are the thousand creeds / That move men's hearts... Emily Bronte

Poetry is attendance upon the world - Janet Frame

A keeper of the artistic estate, a custodian of griefs and wonders - Seamus Heaney

...if poetry is a method of approaching truths, and each of us with a human soul and 'a tongue in oor heids' can make an approach toward a truth, poetry is inherently democratic. - Kathleen Jamie

Go for it, petal. Nothing's as real as what you write. (from Writing to Onegin, Ruth Padel)

What happens with me is quite often I start with a memory, mix it with observations of people I know and then mix in a bit of 'What if...?' - Michael Rosen

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