His poems are direct and arresting, playful, full of startling imagery, and are hilarious, passionate and erotic as often as they are political - often managing to be all these things at once - Maura Dooley

An engraver in short, sharp slashes that go deep. Andrew Salkey

Be precise, said wise Wei T'ai, / about the thing / but reticent / about the feeling. - from 'Poems and Things'

Hampton is an open-minded writer, with the uncertainties and hesitations of the true seeker. - Stephen Lawrence

A poem may be an instance of morality, of social conditions, of psychological history; it may instance all its qualities, but never one of them alone, nor any two or three; never less than all. Allen Tate

There's no one like him for making a simple declarative sentence crackle under your eyes like a burning apple-bough. Such magnificent wrath... - Hayden Carruth on Yvor Winters

My father could only sign/His name, but he'd look at blueprints/& say how many bricks/ Formed each wall - My Father's Letters, Yusef Komunyakaa

Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change. - 'Locksley Hall', Alfred Tennyson

I've always been concerned to get into [my poetry] the details of daily living which portray - or betray - human strengths and weaknesses and oddities. - Alan Brownjohn

I want that next poem. To get it I'll shed my skin, I'll lose my name, pretend I have no history, be history's fool, become elemental, all of these, none of these. - Fred D'Aguiar