Poetry and prayer are very similar.

Poets deal in writing about feelings and trying to find the language and images for intense feelings.

If we think of what's up ahead, with climate change and wars over water, it's very frightening.

I have piles of poetry books in the bathroom, on the stairs, everywhere. The only way to write poetry is to read it.

The moment of inspiration can come from memory, or language, or the imagination, or experience - anything that makes an impression forcibly enough for language to form.

She stood upon a continent of ice, which sparkled between sea and sky, endless and dazzling, as though the world kept all its treasure there; a scale which balanced poetry and prayer.

I grew up in a bookless house - my parents didn't read poetry, so if I hadn't had the chance to experience it at school I'd never have experienced it. But I loved English, and I was very lucky in that I had inspirational English teachers, Miss Scriven and Mr. Walker, and they liked us to learn poems by heart, which I found I loved doing.