A thousand martyrs I have made, all sacrificed to my desire. - Aphra Behn 'A Thousand Martyrs'

Poetry is the most elemental of the written arts.

His poetry is what all poetry should be, the surprising and beautiful organisation of things that life has disorganised. John Fuller

'Who ever loved that loved not at first sight' Christopher Marlowe, 'Hero and Leander'

The most remarkable phenomenon of the English poetic scene ... has been the advent, or perhaps I should say the irruption, of Gavin Ewart - Philip Larkin.

Air falls under the heavy yoke of bells - 'Sunday Morning', Denis Glover

I don't want to be one of those ivory tower writers; I want to affect people's lives.

She is all States, and all princes I, / Nothing else is. John Donne

This is work you can't ignore - raw, reckless and more bloody-minded than an older, so-called wiser poet would dare to be - Selima Hill

Her scary, unsettling voice seems unexpected in poetry. It cuts her free of the crowd - The Times

Good writing gives energy, whatever it is about. But the fact that writers are dealing with essential issues...I think that's a necessary integration of literary writing with what's actually going on in our world. - Marilyn Hacker

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