3 December 2020 Norman MacCaig When I was asked to be Writer in Residence at Edinburgh I thought, you can’t teach poetry. This is ridiculous.
3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 Norman MacCaig And if they haven’t got poetry in them, there’s nothing you can do that will produce it.
3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 Norman MacCaig I was very interested in American poetry for many years. Much less now.
3 December 2020 Norman MacCaig I never think about poetry except when I’m writing it. I mean my poetry.
3 December 2020 Norman MacCaig 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.
