A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk.

If we understand the past, we are more likely to recognise what is happening around us.

However, I began to submit poems to British magazines, and some were accepted. It was a great moment to see my first poems published. It felt like entering a tradition.

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

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.

If the garden of Eden really exists it does so moment by moment, fragmented and tough, cropping up like a fan of buddleia high up in the gutter of a deserted warehouse, or in a heap of frozen cabbages becoming luminous in the reflected light of roadside snow.

Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn’t work, throw it away.