British - Poet | 1966 -
A living tree is a changing, sleeve shape, a wet, thin, bright green creature that survives in the thin layer between heartwood and bark. It stands waiting for light, which it catches in the close-woven sieves of its leaves.
Alice Oswald
LightTreeWaitingGreenLivingWet
I believe the poet shouldn't be in the poem at all except as a lens or as ears.
BelieveLensI BelievePoetEars
At each moment, a poem might grow into a totally different shape. It is not so much like working in a garden. It is more as if you remade the garden every day.
MomentDayGrowYouEvery DayMore
I much preferred Latin to Greek. I loved the language being such a pattern that you could not shift a word without the whole sentence falling to pieces.
LanguageLovedYouFallingWithout
At eight, I made a commitment to poetry. Until then, I thought I'd be a policeman. But I went a whole night without sleeping, and the next day the world had changed. It needed a different language.
CommitmentDayPoetryWorldNight
I never meant to be a full-time poet: I started out as a gardener, an ideal job for a poet because your head is left free.
JobFreeMeant To BeNeverOutHead
To be a poet is as serious, long-term and natural as the effort to be the best human you can be. To express something well is not a question of having a top-class education and understanding poetic forms: rather, it's a question of paying attention.
EducationBestEffortUnderstanding
I like Patti Smith's lyrics, and sometimes think I could be influenced by them. But she has a kind of cool that's beyond me.
MeCoolThinkSometimesKindShe
I try not to invent; I try simply to translate the weird language of the natural world. And I'm not into absolute ownership of things.
WorldLanguageWeirdOwnershipTry
Even when writing your own poems, you need to talk to people; you need to magpie around, getting words and things. I'm very against the celebrity culture that wants to say: 'this is a genius, this is one person who has done something brilliant.' There are always a hundred people in the background who have helped to make it.
CultureWordsPeopleWritingGenius
It's a question of trying to take down by dictation what's already there. I'm not making something, I'm trying to hear it.
TryingDownQuestionTakeSomething
People are so used to reading novels now, they just read a poem straight through to get the meaning. And that's something totally different from the slow way you read something if it's a tune; which to me a poem has to be.
PeopleMeReadingSlowMeaningYou
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