So we start with an oversignifying reader. Those texts that appear to reward this reader for this additional investment - text that we find exceptionally suggestive, apposite, or musical - are usually adjudged to be 'poetic'. ... The work of… — Don Paterson Copy Share Image
This capacity for oversignifying, for reading in, is precisely what poets tap into, both in their own practice and in the poem the give to the reader; and in doing so they turn language against its own project of conceptual… — 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… — Don Paterson Copy Share Image
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
