I think you have to live inside your contradictions and find a way to accept that that's the human condition - to be forced to live in contradiction.

Sometimes it gets talked about as if life is all about the individual, and I don't think it is. I'm really interested in what writing can contribute to a kind of cultural intelligence.

Poetry is a really helpful instrument. It's so physical; the musicality becomes a sort of expression of the body. The mind is there too, in the formal aspects of the poem. The emotions are there in the way the senses gather things into the poem.

Climate change is a moral challenge, not simply an economic or technological problem. It is linked to social justice, because it is the poor citizens of the world who will suffer the most from our excesses.

I'm always trying to ask myself both "Who am I as an individual?" and "What are the cultural forces that have made me the person that I am?" How can I understand myself as a cultural creature as well as an individual? I'm really obsessed with that question, and always asking my students to consider it.

I think you have to live inside your contradictions and find a way to accept that that's the human condition - to be forced to live in contradiction.

I like the dance between sustained focus and digression that the long poem invites. A controlling metaphor helps to sustain the long poem.