Norman MacCaig

“All those authors there, most of whom of course I've never met. That's the poetry side, that's the prose side, that's the fishing and miscellaneous behind me. You get an affection for books that you've enjoyed.”

“And if they haven't got poetry in them, there's nothing you can do that will produce it.”

“And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn't think so.”

“However, I learned something. I thought that if the young person, the student, has poetry in him or her, to offer them help is like offering a propeller to a bird.”

“I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry.”

“I was very interested in American poetry for many years. Much less now.”

“In fact a lot of them I think are absolute baloney. Those Charles Olsens and people like that. At first I was interested in seeing what they were up to, what they were doing, why they were doing it. They never moved me in the way that one is moved by true poetry.”

“When I was asked to be Writer in Residence at Edinburgh I thought, you can't teach poetry. This is ridiculous.”

“When I was a teacher, teachers would come into my classroom and admire my desk on which lay nothing whatever, whereas theirs were heaped with papers and books.”