Quotes from Fleur Adcock

Poetry is a search for ways of communication; it must be conducted with openness, flexibility, and a constant readiness to listen.

Somehow we manage it: to like our friends, to tolerate not only their little ways but their huge neuroses, their monumental oddness: "Oh well," we smile, "it's one of his funny days."

There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public. There are worse things than these miniature betrayals, committed or endured or suspected; there are worse things than not being able to sleep for thinking about them. It is 5 a.m. All the worse things come stalking in and stand icily about the bed looking worse and worse and worse.

It is 5 a.m. All the worse things come stalking in and stand icily about the bed looking worse and worse and worse. -From the poem Fear

Happy ending After they had not made love she pulled the sheet up over her eyes until he was buttoning his shirt: not shyness for their bodies - those they had willingly displayed - but a frail endeavour to apologise. Later, though, drawn together by a distaste for such 'untidy ends' they agreed to meet again; whereupon they giggled, reminisced, held hands as though what they had made was love - and not that happier outcome, friends.

But now that I am in love with a place which doesn't care how I look, or if I'm happy, happy is how I look

Art's whatever you choose to frame.