His poetry is what all poetry should be, the surprising and beautiful organisation of things that life has disorganised. John Fuller

I might have known, / What far too soon, alas! I learn'd / The heart can bind itself alone, / And faith may oft be unreturn'd.' Matthew Arnold, 'Isolation: To Marguerite'

All things within this fading world hath end. ('Before the Birth of One of Her Children')

The poetry of the earth is never dead. John Keats

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

I don't want to be one of those ivory tower writers; I want to affect people's lives.

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on. Robert Frost

Each sharp star speaks of something long gone - 'Cactus', Siobhan Harvey

John Fairfax's poems return us to the important sources: spells they braid linger and haunt like sweetness of a wood after rain. - Adam Thorpe

Are words no more than waving, wavering flags? - 'The right word', Imtiaz Dharker

...the popular music of Jamaica, the music of the people, is an essentially experiential music... the music reflects the historical experience. - Linton Kwesi Johnson

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