My poems are the product of a relationship between a side of my mind which is conscious, alert, educated and manipulative, and a side which is as murky as a primeval swamp […] I want my writing to be as clear as water. No ornate language; very few obvious tricks. I want readers to be able to see all the way down through its surfaces into the swamp. I want them to feel they’re in a world they thought they knew, but which turns out to be stranger, more charged, more disturbed than they realized.”

Andrew Motion

“In my style, the idea is that it’s more ornate because that’s what consciousness is. To the extent that it hurtles, that it’s circular and hurtling, it’s because that’s how I feel consciousness is, that’s what it’s like to be a person. You don’t have these perfectly transparent, simple thoughts. You have thoughts that are all cluttered up, like overused bookshelves. Do I think there’s content that’s important and even essential in those sentences? Absolutely I do.”

Rick Moody