Pastoral Resources

Poetry is the work of poets, not of peoples or communities; artistic creation can never be anything but the production of an individual mind.

I don't know if younger poets read a lot of, you know, the poets - the established poets. There was a lot of pretty boring stuff to sort of put up with and to add to, to make something vital from.

Francis Webb is easily our greatest poet and one of the greatest poets in the world but he's hardly ever mentioned.

He was certainly in a confused state. I used to go and visit him in Callan Park. They were really - to me they were the best poets those two writing in those days but it wasn't very encouraging because, well, they weren't getting far were they?

Intellectuals, academics, writers and poets were an important force in the early groups of volunteers. They had the means to get to Spain and were accustomed to travelling, whereas very few workers had left British shores.

Inspiration is a farce that poets have invented to give themselves importance.

The ancient Greek oral poets all had this anxiety about the deficiencies of their memories and always began poems by praying to the Muse to help them remember.

Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature's monotony.

Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.

Poets are the only people to whom love is not only a crucial, but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to mistake it for a universal one.

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others.

I was always interested in French poetry sort of as a sideline to my own work, I was translating contemporary French poets. That kind of spilled out into translation as a way to earn money, pay for food and put bread on the table.

Poets are all who love, who feel great truths, And tell them; and the truth of truths is love.

The community of poets I belong to is not as close as it used to be, if only for the fact that our lives have become busier: jobs, children, and the like.

Poets have to be sensitive to their audience, but it does not mean that they censor themselves. I realise my audience is diverse. Some will read with empathy and curiosity while others will take offense.

Poets can't resist the dramatic pull of their lives and so inevitably write autobiographical verse.

I feel very connected to poets across the country.

Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity.