This is where I come from if it's true / to say I come from somewhere not just / anywhere south of the imagination - David Musgrave, from 'Lagoon'

My poetry addresses whatever catches me by surprise. - Michael Sharkey

“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.”

Paradoxes interest me and the desire for beauty, for meaning, for whatever might counterbalance our commodified world... (Peter Boyle)

I look away, but it draws my eye./The water inside me wants it./My hand wants to write it. from 'Irrigator in the Far Field' by Stephanie Norgate.

A reckless tumble of words mixing the high and the low, like a rummage sale after the death of someone who adored both Shakespeare and smut. Norman Mailer

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

All her poems have written underneath - 'I have seen it.' - Randall Jarrell

Paying attention - listening - to one kind of complexity tells us something about the complexity of experience in general. Fiona Sampson

Good writing gives energy, whatever it is about. But the fact that writers are dealing with essential issues...I think that's a necessary integration of literary writing with what's actually going on in our world. - Marilyn Hacker

Have I not been trying to use the obstacle/Of language well? - 'Malcolm Mooney's Land', W. S. Graham

Markham is tireless in his resistance to orthodoxy, whether artistic, cultural or political. He speaks as he finds, in multiple, unpredictable voices. (Sean O'Brien)