Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear.

We are creatures of story.

Finish the day's writing when you still want to continue.

However, the difficulties and pleasures of the writing itself are similar for a novel with a historical setting and a novel with a contemporary setting, as far as I'm concerned.

I have learned so much from working with other poets, travelling and reading with them, spending days discussing poems in progress. There is the sense that we are all, as writers, part of something which is more powerful than any of us.

I concentrate on the lives of individuals whom the reader comes to know and feel with intimately.

The language has got to be fully alive - I can't bear dull, flaccid writing myself and I don't see why any reader should put up with it.