Poets and Poetry

Conversations with poets, about poems and that include poetry

Collection parts

Poetry by kalen bloodstone CC

Image by Kalen Bloodstone CC3.0

More poetry from RNZ

Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar

- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.

- Allen Ginsberg

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

- T.S. Eliot

Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.

- Audre Lorde

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

- Kahlil Gibran

All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.

- William Wordsworth

There's no money in poetry, but there's no poetry in money, either.

- Robert Graves

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

- Plato

Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn

- Thomas Gray