Carol Ann Duffy

Christmas is taken very seriously in this household. I believe in Father Christmas, and there's no way I'd do anything to undermine that belief.

You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus, in the news, or just what's in your heart.

I think poetry can help children deal with the other subjects on the curriculum by enabling them to see a subject in a new way.

Auden said poetry makes nothing happen. But I wonder if the opposite could be true. It could make something happen.

Poetry and prayer are very similar.

It's always good when women win things in fiction because it tends to be more male-dominated, unlike poetry, which is more equal.

I have piles of poetry books in the bathroom, on the stairs, everywhere. The only way to write poetry is to read it.

I still read Donne, particularly his love poems.

If I felt, in the event of a royal wedding, inspired to write about people coming together in marriage or civil partnership, I would just be grateful to have an idea for the poem. And if I didn't, I'd ignore it.

I grew up in a bookless house - my parents didn't read poetry, so if I hadn't had the chance to experience it at school I'd never have experienced it. But I loved English, and I was very lucky in that I had inspirational English teachers, Miss Scriven and Mr. Walker, and they liked us to learn poems by heart, which I found I loved doing.

The moment of inspiration can come from memory, or language, or the imagination, or experience - anything that makes an impression forcibly enough for language to form.