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.

You've got criminal courts and child welfare officials refusing to do their jobs and protect children so they can shift the cases over to family court where predatory professionals can turn a dirty buck off the atrocities committed against children.

There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic.

Peter Lucas and I live in Durham but spend a great of time in North Wales, where we have a cottage in the mountains, and in Vermont, USA, with my sister - who is a children's writer married to a poet.

There's no friend like someone who has known you since you were five.

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

Blackbirds are the cellos of the deep farms.