I would say that the poem exists in a space somewhere between the reader and the author, and in a sense belongs to neither, and both. - Don Paterson

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

I'd like to think...that people in pubs would talk about my poems. - Larkin to his publisher

Finely wrought verse that is tough, but also lyrical. A distinctive new voice - Neil Rollinson

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

I think so highly of poetry that I've dedicated my life to it. It's the most important thing to me. - Kit Wright

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

A jet-age Tennyson - London Review of Books

And here is love / like a tinsmith's scoop / sunk past its gleam / in the meal-bin - 'Mossbawn Sunlight', Seamus Heaney

There is no gaudiness in her poetry; instead the reader is aware of a generosity of spirit which allows the poems' subjects their own unbullied reality. - The Listener

You cannot fake anything if you are trying to write serious poetry. - Elizabeth Jennings

...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