Translation is an interestingly different way to be involved both with poetry and with the language that I've found myself living in much of the time. I think the two feed each other.

There may be more poetry than justice in poetic justice.

On July 26 1916 I announced to all my friends in America that from now on I resolved to write no more poems in the classical language and to begin my experiments in writing poetry in the so-called vulgar tongue of the people.

Poetry has the virtue of being able to say twice as much as prose in half the time and the drawback if you do not give it your full attention of seeming to say half as much in twice the time.

A public expectation it has to be said not of poetry as such but of political positions variously approvable by mutually disapproving groups.

I think when kids just see well-crafted poetry it's just obtuse to them. It's hard to relate to.

I've always had a love for poetry and when I got signed to a record label I thought 'How odd that I'm doing a record before a book of poetry '

I was trained as an actress. But I wasn't a very convincing actress so I started doing punk poetry and then fell into doing stand-up.

There is one type of ideal woman very seldom described in poetry - the old maid the woman whom sorrow or misfortune prevents from fulfilling her natural destiny.

Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation.