Tahar Ben Jelloun

For me, poetry is a situation – a state of being, a way of facing life and facing history.

Poetry is not only a set of words which are chosen to relate to each other it is something which goes much further than that to provide a glimpse of our vision of the world.

Poetry is a form of mathematics, a highly rigorous relationship with words.

I came to poetry through the urgent need to denounce injustice, exploitation, humiliation. I know that’s not enough to change the world. But to remain silent would have been a kind of intolerable complicity.

Real friendship, like real poetry, is extremely rare – and precious as a pearl.