Poetry does not consist of words alone there must be sentiment and fancy combination and arrangement.

We recognise in the finished art which is the result of these conditions the best words in the best order - poetry and to put this essential poetry into different classes is impossible.

But in the finished art of the song the use of words has no connection with the use of words in poetry.

If we ask a vague question such as 'What is poetry?' we expect a vague answer such as 'Poetry is the music of words ' or 'Poetry is the linguistic correction of disorder.'

Conventional wisdom notwithstanding there is no reason either in football or in poetry why the two should not meet in a man's life if he has the weight and cares about the words.

I don't like poetry that just slaps violent words on a canvas as it were.

Children seem naturally drawn to poetry - it's some combination of the rhyme rhythm and the words themselves.

Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear.

Well the great thing for me about poetry is that in good poems the dislocation of words that is to say the distance between what they say they're saying and what they are actually saying is at its greatest.

I like the way words go together and I like the gamesmanship of writing poetry. It is such a challenge.