James Fenton

From James Fenton 2002 An introduction to English poetry 
Penguin Books


p. 14
"You American poets, he said, and you European poets, you think that because you are poets you are very important, whereas I am an African, and I don't think I am important at all. When I go into a village and begin to tell a story, the first thing the audience will do is interrupt me. They will ask questions about the story I am telling, and if I do not work hard they will take over the story and tell it among themselves. I have to work hard to get the story back from them ...

We all assumed that, because we were poets, the audience would listen to us in appreciative silence. A hush would fall when we approached the rostrum, and when we sat down there would be applause. But to the African these seemed arrogant assumptions. To him, every scrap of attention and appreciation had to be worked for." 

http://www.jamesfenton.com/poetry/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/series/jamesfentonspoetrymasterclass

censorship

George Orwell wrote: "literary censorship ... is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without any need for an official ban." One means of silencing challenges to orthodoxy is that the press is in the hands of "wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics," and to silence unwelcome voices. A second device is a good education, which instills the "general tacit agreement that 'it wouldn't do' to mention that particular fact."
p.163

The project of keeping the public uninformed, passive, and obedient traces far back in history, but constantly takes new forms. That is particularly true when people win a degree of freedom, and cannot so easily be subdued by the threat or exercise of violence.
p. 179

In 1917 President Woodrow Wilson established the country's first official propaganda agency, called the Committe on Public Information ... its task was to turn a pacifist population into hysterical jingoists and enthusiasts for war ... These efforts had enormous success, including scandalous fabrications that were exposed long after they had done their work, and often persisted even after exposure ...
p. 179

Edward Bernays - one of the founders of the PR industry - "it was the astounding success of propaganda during the war that opened the eyes of the intelligent few in all departments of life to the possibility of regimenting the public mind."
p. 180

These mechanisms of regimentation of minds are "a new art in the practice of democracy". Walter Lippmann - most eminent figure of the century in American journalism.  
p. 180

The business world and the elite intellectuals were concerned with the same problem. "The bourgeoisie stood in fear of the common people," Bernays observed. As a result of "universal suffrage and universal schooling ... the masses promised to become king" - a dangerous tendency that could be controlled and reversed by new methods "to mold the mind of the masses" Bernays advised.
p.180

From "The Secular Priesthood and the Perils of Democracy"
in Noam Chomsky  2002 "On Nature and Language" edited by A Belletti & L Rizzi
UK Cambridge

Samuel Johnson

"The two most engaging powers of an author are, to make new things familiar and familiar things new."

Anthony Lawrence

On writing love poems: 
"you have to write around or to the side ... by weaving in and out of focus ... being associative ... in order to be able to see things very clearly you often have to deliberately take a back road"

from Poetica, RN 
http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2012/10/pca_20121020_1505.mp3 

http://www.griffith.edu.au/humanities-languages/school-humanities/staff/dr-anthony-lawrence 

Dennis O'Driscoll

"... all poetry is reaching for silence in some way ... deeply conscious of every word, paring it back all the time, cutting it back - why is it doing that? because it's trying to reach nearer to the silence ... how does it do that? ... it does that by having a music ... it's got to have some kind of music that is lifting you to somewhere else ..."

"T. S. Eliot more or less said ... if you write for one hour you are doing very well, but what do you do for the other twenty-three hours of the day? 
... you must have a grounding, there must be a context into which you write ..."

from live recording at Adelaide Writers' Week 2012

http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2012/10/pca_20121006_1505.mp3 


http://dennisodriscoll.com/