Lee Harwood is one of Britain's best poets and best kept secrets. -- John Ashbery

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry. For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him. - Christopher Smart 'My cat Jeoffrey'

Go to thy little senseless play; thou dost not heed my lay. - Joanna Baillie 'A Mother To Her Waking Infant'

Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee, warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee. - Robert Burns 'Song: ae fond kiss and then we sever'

Strands of autobiography, a deeply sensuous ecology of place, historical narratives; the inner world of imagination and the often difficult realities of the postcolonial nation are interwoven in McWatt's bold but carefully worked out architecture. Peepal Tree

The mountaineer climbs the mountain because it's there; the poet writes poetry so that it should continue to be there.

Oh, what a lantern, what a lamp of light - Mary Sidney Herbert, O

What we cannot speak about we must

I am what I am because of all this - I am what is around me - these woods have made me. Lorine Niedecker

The composition stage of the poem is not finished until I am satisfied with how the poem works in the mouth and in the ear as well as in relation to its imagery and its meaning.

We belong to the houses we live in. ('Hoopoe')

I believe that in all diverse forms of artistic expression across all countries, there are some sensitivities in common. Esther Phillips