Wheatley's is a poetry of displacement, uncertainty and sheer possibility ... Stimulating, resourceful and often very funny - The Guardian

Joyous, brilliant and moving -- Costa Prize judges

He has the gift of epic objectivity: behind his poems we feel not the assertion of his personality, but the actuality of events, the facts and sufferings of history. -- Ted Hughes

"This is sanity speaking, with a mask of tragedy pulled up from its face. This is a stunning poet arguing with the failing authority of her culture, the whole Silk Road curled up and hissing by her feet." Valzhyna Mort

He stands among the indispensable poets of modern and contemporary Scotland - Douglas Dunn

Poems full of light and colour, sensuality and serenity. -- Joan Bakewell

Poetry is our human love of metaphor. We see one thing and think something else - 'Travels in Peru', Geoffrey Lehmann

Lee Harwood is one of Britain's best poets and best kept secrets. -- John Ashbery

I be free to goo abrode, or teake agean my hwomeward road to where, vor me, the apple tree do lean down low in Linden Lea. - William Barnes 'My orcha'd in Linden Lea'

Strands of autobiography, a deeply sensuous ecology of place, historical narratives; the inner world of imagination and the often difficult realities of the postcolonial nation are interwoven in McWatt's bold but carefully worked out architecture. Peepal Tree

The mountaineer climbs the mountain because it's there; the poet writes poetry so that it should continue to be there.

The composition stage of the poem is not finished until I am satisfied with how the poem works in the mouth and in the ear as well as in relation to its imagery and its meaning.