Those who say we should dismantle the role of Poet Laureate altogether, the trick they miss is that being called this thing, with the weight of tradition behind it, and with the association of the Royal family, does allow you to have conversations and to open doors, and wallets, for the good of poetry in a way that nothing else would allow.
Conversations
I would like to help people have honest and constructive conversations about energy. We need to understand how much energy our modern lifestyles use, decide how much energy we would like to use in the future, and choose where we will get that energy from.
There are many tough conversations, but one of the most difficult is between a parent and an adolescent daughter, partly because as a parent we are almost always attempting to relate to someone who is no longer there.
If you are socially isolated, you are more vulnerable to stereotypes and myths; you won’t have the opportunity to have conversations with someone who has a different social background than you.
I don’t live with earplugs. I don’t like the spotlight – but I like overhearing conversations.
Democracy isn’t solely about polite conversations in parliaments. It needs to be continually refreshed with raw passions, anger and ideals.
Some of us may just, in one-on-one conversations with our family, with our friends, over the back fence with our neighbors, talk about the reality of our lives and realize that we’re not alone, that we have a right to be physically safe and emotionally safe in our own homes.
We are engaged in immediate conversations with the White House on deliberations over a successor whom we hope will continue in the general direction of Attorney General Holder.
Questions that have no right to go away are those that have to do with the person we are about to become; they are conversations that will happen with or without our conscious participation.
The character of a man is known from his conversations.