I will have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love. Love above all.... not the artful postures of love, but love that overthrows life. Unbiddable, ungovernable, like a riot in the heart, and nothing to be done, come ruin or rapture.

-- Viola de Lesseps, Shakespeare in LoveOur natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to ( Read more... )

We have been told we cannot do this, by a chorus of cynics who will only grow louder and more dissonant. We have been asked to pause for a 'reality check.' We have been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope ( Read more... )

Life is too short for indifference.

A poem with one line wrong is like a Rubik's Cube with one square wrong: what it precisely is not is one move away from completion.

-- Don Paterson, The Blind Eye, Faber and Faber, 2007

by Tony Kushner ( Read more... )

Don Paterson on why he chose to do a version of Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus ( Read more... )

It strikes me kind of funny ( Read more... )

Don Paterson, writing about po-mo poetry in the Preface to New British Poetry:

Mostly, though, their work is incomprehensible..... By 'incomprehension' I don't mean a reaction to 'difficulty' or 'strangeness'; strangeness and difficulty abound in the Mainstream. I refer to that special category of difficulty whose sensible interpretation or ( Read more... )

Don Paterson, on writing poetry in form:

I also find that subconscious can operate a lot more freely if I throw the left side of my brain some indigestible intellectual doggy-chew to shut it up and prevent it from interrupting. In that sense, form is like the honey-cake you throw to Cerberus to placate him while you nip into Hades to steal ( Read more... )

I feel like when I'm sitting in front of an empty page, part of the problem is I feel like the poem could start anywhere.  So there I am sitting in front of an empty page and I feel like the page is almost a symbol of pure potential.  I could start with the window or the bird or my feet or my shoes or my socks or my nose, my thumb, anywhere, I ( Read more... )