Since this site appeared on the web, in early 2001, poets have been quoted on the home page, usually as a kind of "thought for the month". A selection of favourites is featured here. By buying any of these titles via these links you will be helping to support this website.

Denise Levertov

Just brilliant.

"but ineluctable this shimmering
of wind in the blue leaves:

this flood of stillness
widening the lake of sky"

from Of Being - Denise Levertov

Marge Piercy

Marge Piercy has been a favourite poet for many years, and I've quoted her poems several times on this website.

"Once I thought the seasons were mine,
moods, passions, itches I could scratch,
voids I could fill with other's bodies.

Now I know I am in the seasons, of them.
The sun warms the upturned soil and my arm.
Spring moves through me like an armada of light."

from Shad Blow - Marge Piercy (from Mars and Her Children)

Brian Patten

At around the same age I first read Marge Piercy, I discovered Brian Patten's 'The Irrelevant Song'. The slim volumes I own seem to be out of print now, but many of the most memorable poems are included in the more recent collection Love Poems (pictured left).

For more information see www.contemporarywriters.com: Brian Patten

"And as if linked to some spider thread
Made visible only because of rain,
You sat and watched the day come light
And hope leapt back into your brain,

And suddenly this surprising earth,
No longer clouded, was known again,
And all you had thought lost you found
Was simply for a time mislaid."

from You Missed the Sunflowers at their Height - Brian Patten
Four Quartets

Four Quartets
- T S Eliot


New Selected Poems: Denise Levertov

New Selected Poems - Denise Levertov



Colours Passing Through Us - Poems by Marge Piercy

Colours Passing Through Us - Marge Piercy





Love Poems: Brian Patten

Love Poems - Brian Patten


Storm Damage

Storm Damage - Brian Patten