Poets sing our human music for us.

Auden said poetry makes nothing happen. But I wonder if the opposite could be true. It could make something happen.

You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus, in the news, or just what's in your heart.

Where I lived - winter and hard earth.I sat in my cold stone roomchoosing tough words, granite, flint,to break the ice. My broken heart -I tried that, but it skimmed,flat, over the frozen lake.She came from a long, long way,but I saw her at last, walking,my daughter, my girl, across the fields,In bare feet, bringing all spring's flowersto her mother's house. I swearthe air softened and warmed as she moved,the blue sky smiling, none too soon,with the small shy mouth of a new moon.

I write quite a lot of sonnets, and I think of them almost as prayers: short and memorable, something you can recite.

Better off dead than giving in; not taking what you want.

Having a child takes you back to all those parts of your own childhood that you had hidden away.