A lot of my poems are about how ill I am and how I probably won't live beyond next week. I publish a poem and everyone says 'cluck cluck, how wonderful, how brave', but then embarrassingly I'm still here! You see the problem?

The great thing about living until you get a bit older if you are a writer, and especially a poet, is that you have more life to reflect on. And I think that if I am better now - and I think that I am probably better than I was - is because that I simply have more to think about, more to get under control, more to understand.

I've got life for a subject because as life starts to drain away, you start seeing very clearly what life is, for the first time.

They had a... dog called Bluey. A know psychopath, Bluey would attack himself if nothing else was available.

Everyone has a right to a university degree in America, even if it's in Hamburger Technology.

Reading and writing... are exciting. The most exciting things I can think of. And now, as I reflect... I have to say that I've been lucky in that I'm amused by what I do - sufficiently amused.

The Canadian version of Julius Caesar's memoirs? I came, I saw, I coped.