Quotes from Norman MacCaig

When I talk of hearing a poet's voice speaking, I always think of it as in the presence of the man.

In some ways I'm a reticent man, and for quite a number of years there wasn't very much of my real true deep feelings in my writing.

Scholars, I plead with you, Where are your dictionaries of the wind, the grasses?

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.

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

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

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.

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

And in a way, that's been a help to me, because I take great passions for a particular poet - sometimes it lasts for many years, sometimes only for a while. This happens to everybody.

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.

I said I have no powers of invention. Well, I also have no powers of mimicry.

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.

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 some poets are far better read off the page because they're very bad speakers. I'm thinking of one in particular whom I won't name, a good poet, and he reads in such a dry, boring way, your eyes start drooping.

A terrible thing about getting oldish is that your friends start dying, and in the last ten years I have lost seven or eight of my closest.

I used to fish the Border rivers, but nowadays you have to queue up for a shot and I can't stand that.

It's like breathing in and out to me. It's like having a conversation with someone who isn't there. Because it has to be addressed to somebody - not a particular person, or very rarely.

I only keep books that I like very much. Otherwise I'd throw them out.

I don't think of myself all the time.

I'm very gregarious, but I love being in the hills on my own.

But I hang on to books. I love them. I even think they're very nice decor in a room - far better than paintings... That's not quite true!

I find it's impossible for me to read Proust.

Anybody who writes doesn't like to be misunderstood.