Poetry Is Music From The Place You Are Born – Unknown

Maya Angelou was born in St. Louis, Missouri on April 4th 1928, and raised in Arkansas. She is often referred to as the pioneer for African-American Women’s writing in the U.S. and remains an internationally celebrated storyteller. Angelou’s poetry, autobiographical fiction, essays…

Appointed Poet Laureate in 1896, Austin was born in Headingley and was educated at Stonyhurst College, St Mary’s College and at the University of London. His upbringing was Roman Catholic but moved towards agnosticism over time.  He trained as a…

I might have known, / What far too soon, alas! I learn'd / The heart can bind itself alone, / And faith may oft be unreturn'd.' Matthew Arnold, 'Isolation: To Marguerite'

Forget the corny comedian: Pam Ayres is a proper poet, whose wistful, funny, and perceptive verse captures both the joy and unfairness of life. - Sunday Times

His poems are direct and arresting, playful, full of startling imagery, and are hilarious, passionate and erotic as often as they are political - often managing to be all these things at once - Maura Dooley

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

Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead. - W. H. Auden

With a lyric poem, you look, and meditate, and put the rock back. With fiction you poke things with a stick to see what will happen. - Margaret Atwood

'here I am, on the edge of animation, / a dream, a dance, a fantastic construction'. Moniza Alvi

I write because my ink must flow like blood. The written must be spoken. Patience Agbabi

Art's whatever you choose to frame. - 'Leaving the Tate', Fleur Adcock