- I Believe
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- Nov 07, 2020
Alice Oswald Quotes
Most Famous Alice Oswald Quotes of All Time!
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- Last Updated on May 30, 2021
- Garden
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- Nov 07, 2020
At each moment, a poem might grow into a totally different shape. It is not so much like working in a garden. It is more as if you remade the garden every day.
- Language
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- Nov 07, 2020
I much preferred Latin to Greek. I loved the language being such a pattern that you could not shift a word without the whole sentence falling to pieces.
- Night
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Job
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Education
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- Nov 07, 2020
To be a poet is as serious, long-term and natural as the effort to be the best human you can be. To express something well is not a question of having a top-class education and understanding poetic forms: rather, it's a question of paying attention.
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Culture
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- Nov 07, 2020
Even when writing your own poems, you need to talk to people; you need to magpie around, getting words and things. I'm very against the celebrity culture that wants to say: 'this is a genius, this is one person who has done something brilliant.' There are always a hundred people in the background who have helped to make it.
- Frustration
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- Nov 07, 2020
I've always felt, with 'The Iliad,' a real frustration that it's read wrong. That it's turned into this public school poem, which I don't think it is. That glamorising of war, and white-limbed, flowing-haired Greek heroes - it's become a cliched, British empire part of our culture.
- Down
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
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 from the slow way you read something if it's a tune; which to me a poem has to be.
- Hate
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- Nov 07, 2020
I hate not managing to speak clearly. I really hate it. I get a feeling of claustrophobia - like I'm locked in my own head - if what I've said hasn't reached someone.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
There's a whole range of words that people use about landscape. Pastoral? Idyll? I can't stand them.
- Great
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- Nov 07, 2020
I have this exercise where I force myself to look out from the flower's point of view at these great walloping humans coming down the path, and try, just try and feel it from their point of view because it's a different world to them, a fascinating hard one.
- Nothing
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- Nov 07, 2020
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 the complacency that kicks in - particularly for the English.
- Think
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- Nov 07, 2020