“Lurking behind this connecting silence is a brooding suspicion over the extent to which the perceptual user-preferences of the human animal limit and distort its experience of reality, and the consequently unreliable nature of much of its thought. Poetry is… — Don Paterson Copy Share Image
“While you spoke, it reached into the room switching off the mirrors in their frames and undeveloping your photographs; it gently drew a knife… — Don Paterson Copy Share Image
The poem, in a sense, is no more or less than a little machine for remembering itself ... Poetry is therefore primarily a commemorative act. — Don Paterson Copy Share Image
“Lurking behind this connecting silence is a brooding suspicion over the extent to which the perceptual user-preferences of the human animal limit and distort… — Don Paterson Copy Share Image
“forget the ink, the milk, the blood - all was washed clean with the flood we rose up from the falling waters the fallen… — Don Paterson Copy Share Image
There's no fury more righteous than that of a sinner accused of the wrong sin. — Don Paterson Copy Share Image
We could easily have evolved eyelids thick enough to keep out the light, but we still need to see the shadows fall across them.… — Don Paterson Copy Share Image
“A poetic form is essentially a codified pattern of silence. We have a little silence at the end of a line, a bigger one at the end of a stanza, and a huge one at the end of the poem. The semantic weight of the poem tends to naturally distribute itself according to that pattern of silence, paying especial care… — Don Paterson Copy Share
So we start with an oversignifying reader. Those texts that appear to reward this reader for this additional investment - text that we find… — Don Paterson Copy Share Image
“Critics all have this idea that authors inhabit another dimensional realm, right up to their first smack in the mouth - which feels to… — Don Paterson Copy Share Image
Imagine your shadow burning off the page / As the dear world and the dead word disengage — Don Paterson Copy Share Image
