Top 15 Dennis O'Driscoll Quotes

Seamus Heaney is no more Irish than that other poet of the local, universal and eternal , James Joyce. Both men think locally and globally.

Even the Revenue is better loved by the twenty first century Irish natives than were the English colonists who ruled from Dublin Castle in earlier centuries.

However much poetry may be respected in Ireland , this respect more often translates , in practice, into tolerance and acceptance, rather than support. Poetry is a 'nice' thing to live with , as long as it does not come too close.

Poetry is a highly visible art in Ireland ; in our rapidly secularised society, it has become a kind of erzatz religion, applying the elevated ceremonial language without the divisive doctrine.

There is a democratic but deluded post-modern fantasy whereby everybody is demed an artist.

A defining mark of poetry is that it defies definition.

Poetry is nothing less than an aspiration to absolute truth.

When human beings banish God from the world, they make Gods of themselves.

Everybody has certain preoccupations they return to.What looks like an obsession, is often something more modest, namely a return to the fray through a somewhat different angle of vision..from a different stage of your experience.

Language is at the heart of poetry and it is difficult to commandeer words which elicit no personal echo . Of what we can speak, we need not be silent.

Poetry is most convincing when its elements have been lived.

Genuine poetry reminds us how little we truly know, it is a vehicle for discovery, not a conduit for omniscience.

I love the way form and rhythm can somehow confer a higher destiny on even the most workaday words.

I am very driven when it comes to poetry, a complete obsessive of the truth be told.

Sheer power of a great poem is enough to guarantee that it will ultimately make itself felt ,if the reader is in a receptive mood.