Poems are a hotline to our hearts, and we forget this emotional power at our peril

But I can't and don't ever want to write bell-yanking confetti-tossing hat-throwing poems.

I am writing more than I have ever done. My life has come back to me in the most extraordinary way.

I deeply adored my mum. She was an extraordinary person, even for the prejudice I'm likely to have. She was beautiful, amusing, a tremendous elaborator of things into comic proportions and extravagant in her imagination.

But Wordsworth is the poet I admire above all others.

Jenni Fagan is the real thing, and The Panopticon is a real treat: maturely alive to the pains of maturing, and cleverly amused as well as appalled by what it finds in the world.

Each sudden gust of light explains itself as flames, but neither they, nor even bombs redoubled on the hills tonight can quite include me in their fear.