There comes a time when you have to trust your own judgment, when you must close your eyes and let your instinct rule you.

Poets should ignore most criticism and get on with making poetry.

I write, or used to write, to explain to myself situations I couldn't otherwise solve or understand. Meditation comes very naturally to me.

Each word bears its weight, so you have to read my poems quite slowly.

I remain loyal to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in music and to Shakespeare and Jane Austen in literature.

I play with language a great deal in my poems, and I enjoy that. I try to condense language, that is, I try to express complicated but I hope real emotions as simply as possible. But that doesn't mean the poems are simple, just that they are as truthful as I can make them.

I married a young Englishman in Cambridge in 1955 and have lived in Britain every since.