Alice oswald

Most spiders eat and remake their webs every night.

If you put a real leaf and a silk leaf side by side, you'll see something of the difference between Homer's poetry and anyone else's. There seem to be real leaves still alive in the 'Iliad,' real...

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.

One night, I lay awake for hours, just terrified. When the dawn finally came up - the comfortable blue sky, the familiar world returning - I could think of no other way to express my relief than...

There's a whole range of words that people use about landscape. Pastoral? Idyll? I can't stand them.

I believe the poet shouldn't be in the poem at all except as a lens or as ears.

When I was 16, I was taught by a wonderful teacher who let me ignore the Greek syllabus and just read Homer.

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.

There's a lot of rage in my head. I like the friction that means there is nothing relaxing about writing a poem. I can't afford to relax in any area of life. You have to keep your senses awake to all...

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.