It is not a carol of joy or glee, But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,...
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Reading it aloud – poetry is, after all, just written down speech – allow the poem to have a moment to exist. The reader has to put as much care into the reading of the poem as the poet has into writing it. In the relationship between poet, poem and reader, every element has to pull its weight.
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(Poetry) It’s the place in language we are most human and we can see ourselves fully – far more than prose in fiction. A poem is able to hold so much in so little space. It’s a time capsule, a Tardis so much bigger on the inside than it seems on the outside.
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Poetry is in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus .. or just what's in your heart
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I have piles of poetry books in the bathroom, on the stairs, everywhere. The only way to write poetry is to read it.
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Boxing has become America's tragic theater.
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I always wanted a child. Being a mother is the central thing in my life. Having a child takes you back to all those parts of your own childhood that you had hidden away.
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Look at Seamus Heaney or Jo Shapcott – poets that have proved they can reach a huge readership by the quality of their poetry.
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They (Poems) come from lots of places: from personal experience; from memory. Things can be emotionally true even if they are not factually true. Not every poem has to be ‘from’ you even if it is ‘by’ you – other people’s voices come into my poetry.
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Every time a poet writes a poem it’s like it’s the first time. When you’ve finished a poem, you don’t know if you’ll ever write another one. Some poems arrive with a weight that’s more significant than other poems and you know it will take a lot of care to do it justice. Poetry, for so long now, has been the way I relate to everything. It’s like a companion. I can’t imagine ever being separated from it.
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You can teach form. You can teach students how to write a limerick and when those forms become recognisable to the students then they can start to imitate them. I always start with my favourite one: “There was a young man from Australia, who painted his arse like a dahlia, tuppence a smell, went down very well, but thruppence a lick was a failure.” That’s not even the rudest one I teach.
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(About her Mum) She was entrancing, fantastic at making up rhymes and stories. I think it was her Irish syntax and voice music that started my love of words.
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The minute you decide to write a poem you are making artistic and technical decisions about rhyme and form and structure. Each one of those decisions pushes it away from the personal and makes it an artwork. If you were writing entirely personally, you would just write in that “Oh my god I’m so in love, I don’t know what to do with myself” voice. A poem moves away from you as you write it.
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I put together my first pamphlet when I was 16 - they were awful teenage stuff.
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I can entertain the proposition that life is a metaphor for boxing—for one of those bouts that go on and on, round following round, jabs, mi...
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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.
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When you're 50 you start thinking about things you haven't thought about before. I used to think getting old was about vanity -- but actually it's about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial.
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When you're 50 you start thinking about things you haven't thought about before. I used to think getting old was about vanity-but actually it's about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial.
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If you explore beneath shyness or party chit-chat, you can sometimes turn a dull exchange into an intriguing one. I've found this to be particularly true in the case of professors or intellectuals, who are full of fascinating information, but need encouragement before they'll divulge it.
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Dear brightest star o'er Bethlehem, O let your precious light shine in with hope and peace toward men in every home tonight.
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Celebrity was a long time in coming it will go away. Everything goes away.
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When people say there is too much violence in my books, what they are saying is there is too much reality in life.
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Nothing is accidental in the universe -- this is one of my Laws of Physics -- except the entire universe itself, which is Pure Accident, pure divinity.
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How does the poet transform his banal thoughts (are not most thoughts banal?) into such stunning forms, into beauty?
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Carol the waitress, meet Simon the fag.
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The worst cynicism: a belief in luck.
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A Christmas Carol is such a fool-proof story you can't louse it up.
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Burros (also known as Donkeys): Kind/gentle-eyed/velvety-nosed donkey/burro has been throughout history a burden bearer/used extensively in every other conceivable work, and the reward for his loyal service has been neglect/abuse/ridicule! Ever since the decline of mining and the invention of automobile the burro no longer being gainful to man, was abandoned. They banded together and lived off grazing lands which ranchers used for their sheep/cattle, and hunters for their target animals. War is declared on burros by shooting/burning/running them off cliffs to their deaths!'
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In love there are things --- bodies and words.
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When someone who is known for being comedic does something straight, it' s always 'a big breakthrough' or a 'radical departure.' Why is it no one ever says that if a straight actor does comedy Are they presuming comedy is easier
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