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

You must be careful not to deprive the poem of its wild origin. Stanley Kunitz.

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')

Her poems are voyages of discovery. Literally. Over and over she writes about the journeys, physical and metaphysical, that are transformative experiences - Sarah Maguire, Poetry Review

Allen writes poetry that is limpid, very subtle and marvellously wise. - William Boyd

“The poet is a lifer. Anyone who gets into the game will soon start wishing that there was a version of it with lower stakes, but there isn't.”

...one of the best, most generous, and most brilliantly readable poets currently making poems in America. - David Baker, 'Poetry', on Rodney Jones

The poem might be our only evidence that an event has occurred: it exists for us as the sole trace of an occurrence. - Carolyn Forche

My poems are the product of a relationship between a side of my mind which is conscious, alert, educated and manipulative, and a side which is as murky as a primaeval swamp. - Andrew Motion

Poetry's only obligation is to the truth. Whether this truth is widely popular or not is irrelevant. It should be the best truth possible and that is the only quality that gives it any hope of survival. - George Szirtes

Keep it simple and make it visual seems to be the best idea. - Hugo Williams

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