John Mole (b. 1941) has won several prizes for his poetry, including an Eric Gregory award, the Cholmondeley Award and the Signal Award, has been Writer in Residence at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and is currently the Poetry Society's Poet in Residence to the City of London. He trained as a teacher and has worked in both America and Britain, and still often returns to schools to lead poetry workshops and readings.

Favourite Poetry Sayings

"A poem is, so to speak, a way of making you forget how you wrote it." - Randall Jarrell "Put poetry on a pedestal and it ends up on a shelf." - W H Auden "men should know why / They write, and for what end; but, note or text / I never know the word which will come next." - Lord Byron, from 'Don Juan' "If you want to give your unconscious a chance you must keep your eye on something else." - Louis MacNeice "Poetry presents the thing in order to convey the feeling. It should be precise about the thing and reticent about the feeling, for as soon as the mind responds and connects with the thing the feeling shows in the words; this is how poetry enters deeply into us." - Wei T'ai

John Mole


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