Simon Armitage Quotes

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

The best poems come from the world, go through the poet, and go back in to the world.

For some odd reason, the expression 'death of a poet' always sounds somewhat more concrete than 'life of a poet.'

My life is in the art that I make, and I'm very happy with it.

I do not go in search of poetry. I wait for poetry to visit me.

My artistic spirit is not nurtured by blogospheres.

A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.

The reason a poet is a poet is to write poems, not to advertise himself as a poet.

It is not in life, but in art that self-fulfillment is to be found.

I think there is a poem out there for everyone, to be an entrance into the poetry and a relationship with it.

I feel like I am in the service of the poem. The poem isn't something I make. The poem is something I serve.

When I enter that higher-order space that's required to write, I'm a better human. For whatever my writing is, wherever it's ranked, it definitely is the one place that I get to be beautiful.

I'm 38 years old and Limp Bizkit is just something I do. If I was a painter, it would just be a type of painting I make.

But poetry is a way of language, it is not its subject or its maker's background or interests or hobbies or fixations. It is nearer to utterance than history.

Because people are very interested in my poetry, in what I say.

It's absolutely crucial to maintain my life as a poet.

I don't look on poetry as closed works. I feel they're going on all the time in my head and I occasionally snip off a length.

But you'd have a job to find many of my poems which would seem to be very influenced by a particular person.

How can people think that artists seek a name? There is no such thing as an artist - only the world, lit or unlit, as the world allows.

I find as an artist if I'm not expressed relatively consistently, I get really depressed.

Poetry is a call to action, and it also is action.

I don't like to say I have given my life to art. I prefer to say art has given me my life.

You get used to it when you feel like you're an artist.

'Rather You Than Me' just speaks for my natural instinct to survive, but it's also me being a writer, me being a poet - there's also a beautiful side to 'Rather You Than Me.'

My art form is my child, and that's what I give my focus to.