When I was asked to be Writer in Residence at Edinburgh I thought, you cant teach poetry. This is ridiculous. – Norman MacCaig
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. – Norman MacCaig
I never think about poetry except when Im writing it. I mean my poetry. – Norman MacCaig
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. – Norman MacCaig
The flowery Path of Poetry but ill accords with the thorny Mazes of the Law; in the one I have wandered with rapture from Infancy, and I have endeavoured to grace the other with a simple but lasting Ornament—Integrity of Heart. – Charles Snart, “Dedication, to Robert Lowe, Esq. Oxton,” 1807 January 1st, Newar