All that was good, all that was fair, all that was me is gone. - Robert Louis Stevenson 'Sing Me A Song of A Lad That Is Gone'

Spilt is that liquor, my too hasty hand threw down the cup, and did not understand. - Amy Lowell 'A Blockhead'

'There is no God,' the wicked saith, 'and truly it's a blessing, for what he might have done with us it's better only guessing.? - Arthur Hugh Clough 'There Is No God'

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

But love is a durable fire, in the mind ever burning; never sick, never old, never dead, from itself never turning. - Walter Ralegh 'Walsingham'

Adventurous, compelling and utterly original - The Times

'Francis shows us how exactingly language is a form of attention and how poetry can hold our attention in spectacular ways'. The Guardian

It was no dream: I lay broad waking. Thomas Wyatt 'They Flee From Me'

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

"If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad." Lord Byron

As activities, writing poetry and climbing have few connections, apart from a heightened sense of being and awareness, of being fully engaged. Andrew Greig

We've all led raucous lives,/ some of them inside, some of them out./ But only the poem you leave behind is what's important. Charles Wright (from 'Littlefoot')