Vain are the thousand creeds / That move men's hearts... Emily Bronte

It's an existential act, it's vocational, a necessity, a way of working things out.

Poetry is attendance upon the world - Janet Frame

Writing that is full of remarkable, concentrated and pungent images - The Sunday Times

Poems of an alert imagination and a strongly original mind, poems that run along the dangerous edge of things, risky and skilful as an acrobat. - UA Fanthorpe

I don't want to write poems that aren't necessary. - Maxine Kumin

A keeper of the artistic estate, a custodian of griefs and wonders - Seamus Heaney

...if poetry is a method of approaching truths, and each of us with a human soul and 'a tongue in oor heids' can make an approach toward a truth, poetry is inherently democratic. - Kathleen Jamie

Go for it, petal. Nothing's as real as what you write. (from Writing to Onegin, Ruth Padel)

What happens with me is quite often I start with a memory, mix it with observations of people I know and then mix in a bit of 'What if...?' - Michael Rosen

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

A Midsummer Night's Dream might still be the answer to everything. - R. F. Langley