One problem we face comes from the lack of any agreed sense of how we should be working to train ourselves to write poetry.

The Mormon mission to Africa, as to other dark-skinned parts of the world, was for a long time hobbled by the racism of the movement's scripture.

The lullaby is the spell whereby the mother attempts to transform herself back from an ogre to a saint.

A really interesting and happy time was when I first went to Florence as a student and studied Italian. I was living in a pensione on an allowance of £40 a month, which was princely. I did a lot of work and enjoyed myself immensely.

English poetry begins whenever we decide to say the modern English language begins, and it extends as far as we decide to say that the English language extends.

"Love" is so short of perfect rhymes that convention allows half-rhymes like "move". The alternative is a plague of doves, or a kind of poem in which the poet addresses his adored both as "love" and as "guv" - a perfectly decent solution once, but only once, in a while.

Great poetry does not have to be technically intricate.