Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Poets sing our human music for us.
Poetry and prayer are very similar.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
The stars are filming us for no one.
I still read Donne, particularly his love poems
I still read Donne, particularly his love poems.
I am always pleased to be asked to write a poem.
My prose is turgid, it just hasn't got any energy
Between 9am and 3pm is when I work most intensely
My prose is turgid, it just hasn't got any energy.
I'll be left writing picture books and fairy tales
Between 9am and 3pm is when I work most intensely.
I'll be left writing picture books and fairy tales.
I like to use simple words, but in a complicated way.
What will you do now with the gift of your left life?
I like to think that I'm a sort of poet for our times.
How would you prepare to die on a perfect April evening?
Better off dead than giving in; not taking what you want.
Every day is a gift with a child, no matter what problems you have.
I always wanted a child. Being a mother is the central thing in my life.
Time hates love, wants love poor,/but love spins gold, gold, gold from straw.
You have me like a drawing, erased, coloured in, untitled, signed by your tongue.
Edinburgh is my favourite city. We'll be doing a lot of children's theatre and galleries.
I always say that I'll have a go and see whether the poem works and if it does, then fine.
I write in that space between Ella's childhood and mine. I know it all sounds a bit sinister.
If we think of what's up ahead, with climate change and wars over water, it's very frightening.
I think the dangers are different now. Our abuse of the planet and our resources is an anxiety.
Having a child takes you back to all those parts of your own childhood that you had hidden away.
Poets deal in writing about feelings and trying to find the language and images for intense feelings.
I see the shape of the poem before I start writing, and the writing is just the process of arriving at the shape.
Auden said poetry makes nothing happen. But I wonder if the opposite could be true. It could make something happen.
What do I haveto help me, without spell or prayer,endure this hour, endless, heartless, anonymous,the death of love?
I have piles of poetry books in the bathroom, on the stairs, everywhere. The only way to write poetry is to read it.
I write quite a lot of sonnets, and I think of them almost as prayers: short and memorable, something you can recite.
I think poetry can help children deal with the other subjects on the curriculum by enabling them to see a subject in a new way.
It's always good when women win things in fiction because it tends to be more male-dominated, unlike poetry, which is more equal
It's always good when women win things in fiction because it tends to be more male-dominated, unlike poetry, which is more equal.
You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus, in the news, or just what's in your heart.
For me, poetry is the music of being human. And also a time machine by which we can travel to who we are and to who we will become.
Poetry, above all is a series of intense moments its power is not in narrative. I'm not dealing with facts, I'm dealing with emotion.
The poem is the literary form of the 21st century. It's able to connect young people in a deep way to language... it's language as play.
Like the sand and the oyster, it's a creative irritant. In each poem, I'm trying to reveal a truth, so it can't have a fictional beginning.
Christmas is taken very seriously in this household. I believe in Father Christmas and there's no way I'd do anything to undermine that belief.
Christmas is taken very seriously in this household. I believe in Father Christmas, and there's no way I'd do anything to undermine that belief.
The poem is a form of texting... it's the original text. It's a perfecting of a feeling in language - it's a way of saying more with less, just as texting is.
I think all poets must feel this: that there is constantly something new to be discovered in the language. It's like a thrilling encounter, and you can find things.
The moment of inspiration can come from memory, or language, or the imagination, or experience - anything that makes an impression forcibly enough for language to form.
When you have a child, your previous life seems like someone else's. It's like living in a house and suddenly finding a room you didn't know was there, full of treasure and light.
She stood upon a continent of ice, which sparkled between sea and sky, endless and dazzling, as though the world kept all its treasure there; a scale which balanced poetry and prayer.
If I felt, in the event of a royal wedding, inspired to write about people coming together in marriage or civil partnership, I would just be grateful to have an idea for the poem. And if I didn't, I'd ignore it.