Norman Maccaig

(10 votes)   When I was asked to be Writer in Residence at Edinburgh I thought, you can't teach poetry. This is ridiculous.

Norman MacCaig
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(7 votes)   Anybody who writes doesn't like to be misunderstood.

Norman MacCaig
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(5 votes)   I used to have a great love for Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, the big boys of the last century.

Norman MacCaig
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(5 votes)   When I go fishing I like to know that there's nobody within five miles of me.

Norman MacCaig
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(12 votes)   And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn't think so.

Norman MacCaig
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(11 votes)   All those authors there, most of whom of course I've never met. That's the poetry side, that's the prose side, that's the fishing and miscellaneous behind me. You get an affection for books that you've enjoyed.

Norman MacCaig
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(10 votes)   And also I'm not good at inventing things. And also I'm not good at inventing things. I couldn't invent a plot. I couldn't invent a character.

Norman MacCaig
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(10 votes)   And if they haven't got poetry in them, there's nothing you can do that will produce it.

Norman MacCaig
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(9 votes)   All I write about is what's happened to me and to people I know, and the better I know them, the more likely they are to be written about.

Norman MacCaig
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(8 votes)   A terrible thing about getting oldish is that your friends start dying, and in the last ten years I have lost seven or eight of my closest.

Norman MacCaig
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(8 votes)   I don't think of myself all the time.

Norman MacCaig
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(7 votes)   But I hang on to books. I love them. I even think they're very nice decor in a room - far better than paintings... That's not quite true!

Norman MacCaig
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(7 votes)   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
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(7 votes)   People haven't got the interest in long long works these days. A lack of interest which I share.

Norman MacCaig
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(7 votes)   When I talk of hearing a poet's voice speaking, I always think of it as in the presence of the man.

Norman MacCaig
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