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. — Alice Oswald Copy Share Image
One of the rules of Greek lament poetry is that it mustn't mention the dead by name in case of invoking a ghost. Maybe the 'Iliad,' crowded with names, is more than a poem. Maybe it's a dangerous piece of… — Alice Oswald Copy Share Image
There's a whole range of words that people use about landscape. Pastoral? Idyll? I can't stand them. — Alice Oswald Copy Share Image
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. — Alice Oswald Copy Share Image
I think it is the easiest mentality for a human being to be either colonized or to colonize. The structure of either the slave… — Alice Oswald Copy Share Image
Wind ought to be a verb or an adverb. It isn't really anything. It's a manner of movement of warmth and cold: a kind… — Alice Oswald Copy Share Image
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… — Alice Oswald Copy Share Image
Topsoil is a place of digestion. It sucks and chews things into smaller pieces. When it's hungry, it turns grey and stony; when it's… — Alice Oswald Copy Share Image
Stripped of its plot, the 'Iliad' is a scattering of names and biographies of ordinary soldiers: men who trip over their shields, lose their… — Alice Oswald Copy Share Image
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. — Alice Oswald Copy Share Image
At each moment, a poem might grow into a totally different shape. It is not so much like working in a garden. It is… — Alice Oswald Copy Share Image
If you put a real leaf and a silk leaf side by side, youll see something of the difference between Homers poetry and anyone… — Alice Oswald Copy Share Image
I think it's often assumed that the role of poetry is to comfort, but for me, poetry is the great unsettler. It questions the… — Alice Oswald Copy Share Image
A living tree is a changing, sleeve shape, a wet, thin, bright green creature that survives in the thin layer between heartwood and bark.… — Alice Oswald Copy Share Image
