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

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

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

democracy is dying. We are ruled by faceless bureaucrats and lecherous puritans. ... You think about it. 'All right for me but not for you' is their philosophy.

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

I don't like poetry that just slaps violent words on a canvas, as it were.

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.