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When I first started reading poetry, all the poets I read - Edgar Allan Poe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier - were rhyme poets. That's what captured me.

And some poets are far better read off the page because they're very bad speakers. I'm thinking of one in particular whom I won't name, a good poet, and he reads in such a dry, boring way, your eyes start drooping.

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

I think of poets as outlaw visionaries in a way.

Nobody really knows whether they are a poet. I knew I was interested from the age of 15.

Many poets, as you know, are not good readers.

Poets are like the decathletes of literature.

I was at a benefit for some imprisoned students in the '60s at San Francisco State, and there were lots of poets reading for the benefit: one was Elizabeth Bishop.

Alice Oswald. With Hughes and Heaney gone, people are looking around for the best British and Irish poets. Oswald is one of our finest.

Poets take themselves very seriously.