The imagination is not a State: it is the Human existence itself. William Blake

Sitting around an old table/they drew lines across the map/dividing the place/I would call my country. Choman Hardi 'Lausanne, 1923'

The kind of poetry that imbues the everyday, the tarnished and burnished, with the possibilities of the transcendent - The Times

The poem might be our only evidence that an event has occurred: it exists for us as the sole trace of an occurrence. - Carolyn Forche

It was a world that I wanted to record because it was such a miracle visitation to me. - Laurie Lee

My father could only sign/His name, but he'd look at blueprints/& say how many bricks/ Formed each wall - My Father's Letters, Yusef Komunyakaa

Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand. - Ezra Pound

I believe even 5-year-olds can get something from a Shakespearean sonnet...as long as you DON'T tell them, 'This is really hard.' - Rita Dove

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

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. - Rudyard Kipling

One of the finest poets of our time - Anthony Thwaite

Where is the spirit that touched the hearts / Lightly - chameleon colours of home? - 'Visiting Zomba Plateau', Jack Mapanje