Blackbirds are the cellos of the deep farms.

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

A poem might be defined as thinking about feelings - about human feelings and frailties.

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

Blake has always been a favorite, the lyrics, not so much the prophetic books, but I suppose Yeats influenced me more as a young poet, and the American, Robert Frost.

Sylvia Plath was just a month and a half older than I, and when she committed suicide I was only 30 - and very shocked and sorry. I never knew her personally.

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