Favourite Festival Quotes

'We want this great surf of poetry to rise above us and smash us into the beach. And I don't know why that's so.' - Tom Keneally

'I thought: I'll give up everything I've learned to write my own poems. ... I wanted to have my own voice.' - Sharon Olds

'If you know where you're going before you even begin, there's almost no point in writing it.' - Judith Beveridge

Let subject matter be at the mercy of your language, not the other way around. If you know what you're going to write about then you don't open yourself up to association.' - Anthony Lawrence

"I don't generally make anything up in my poems... I never used to say that because I didn't want to get sued or killed.' - Sharon Olds