Poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is.

We are looking to brands for poetry and for spirituality, because we're not getting those things from our communities or from each other.

I'd never really been content with just churning out these slim volumes every three or four years. I've always tried to think of poetry as an active ingredient in the language rather than just something that appears between the covers of thin books.

People who read poetry, for example, like the feel, the heft and the smell of a book.

If you were going to choose a way of making your way in this world and a place to start from, you might not choose poetry and you might not choose Huddersfield.

The poetry of heroism appeals irresistibly to those who don't go to a war, and even more to those whom the war is making enormously wealthy. It's always so.

The arts generally have had to recognize Modernism - how should poetry escape?

And how can poetry stand up against its new conditions? Its position is perfectly precarious.

It is a happy thing that there is no royal road to poetry. The world should know by this time that one cannot reach Parnassus except by flying thither.

I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry.