Like a lot of people, for a long time I thought that the road to hell is paved with bad sequels.

But Wordsworth is the poet I admire above all others.

I like eating out. I like buying beautiful paintings and being surrounded by beautiful things. I have to finance that life. I can barely afford a pension scheme because I don't make enough money.

But in a lot of ways my poems are very conventional, and it's no big deal for me to write a poem in either free verse or strict form; modern poets can, and do, do both.

I don't want my poems to be sentimental, though I do acknowledge that sentiment is probably rather under-reported in a lot of people's feelings a lot of the time.

I'm ensuring my place in heaven.

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