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 life had a second edition, how I would correct the proofs?. John Clare

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

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

Dorothea Smartt reveals a poetic intelligence and maturity of form and content which definitely locates her among the best of her generation of poets. - Carol Boyce Davies

Not only rich music, an easy lyricism, but also grit, and earthy honesty, a willingness to be vulnerable and clean. - Gwendolyn Brooks

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')

Particles of observation, incomplete phrases and strange juxtapositions seem welded by some hidden charge into a power of feeling. - John Powell Ward

The kind of poetry that imbues the everyday, the tarnished and burnished, with the possibilities of the transcendent - The Times

Her scary, unsettling voice seems unexpected in poetry. It cuts her free of the crowd - The Times