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.

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.

A novel, in the end, is a container, a shape which you are trying to pour your story into.

I hope that readers will tear through my books because they can't stop themselves - and then, maybe, read them again and find new things there.

Poets go through a very tough apprenticeship in the use of words.

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.

Writing children's books gives a writer a very strong sense of narrative drive.