I've been glued to Gabriel Garcia Marquez's memoir, 'Living to Tell the Tale' since I plucked it off the library shelves earlier this week.

In amongst the anecdotes and memories, there's indisputably fine writing, crackling and lightening up the pages.

Some of it, though, is n't always from whom you might suspect. As with this assertion, which sweeps up in both hands what the shocking, seductive, and sacramental power of poetry actually is: 'If poetry does not make my blood run faster, open sudden windows for me on to the mysterious, help me discover the world, accompany this desolate heart in solitude and in love, in joy and enmity, what good is poetry to me'.

This was written by Eduardo Carranza, the beacon of Colombian poetry during the twentieth century.

I simply can't think of a more intoxicating statement, a more passionate and defiant manifesto for poetry than this.