“For a lot of people, poetry tends to be dull. It's not read much. It takes a special kind of training and a lot of practice to read poetry with pleasure. It's like learning to like asparagus.”

“I don't have a poetry section in the bookshop.(Don't have but should have, I have begun to think. The poetry, like everything else, is scattered thematically in a generally successful attempt to encourage punters to walk the circle, reading shelves which, if more conventionally arranged, they might feel happy to skip. But poetry - unlike fiction, biography, drama, history - continues to be generically in demand. It's not a question, as I used to assume, of no one reading poetry; more a matter of people who read poetry liking little else. They need a Section.)”

“I am committed by trade to urging people to attend carefully to the verbal surfaces of what they read. Much of the pleasure and interest of poetry depends on such attention.”

“You have to resign yourself to the fact that you waste a lot of trees before you write anything you really like, and that's just the way it is. It's like learning an instrument, you've got to be prepared for hitting wrong notes occasionally, or quite a lot, cause I wrote an awful lot before I wrote anything I was really happy with. And read a lot. Reading really helps. Read anything you can get your hands on.”

“We don't read and write poetry because its cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is full of passion.”

“According to my poetry perception, Write one a day with no exception;Read out loud and start to practice,Not sounding like you sat on a cactus.”