Nobody really knows whether they are a poet. I knew I was interested from the age of 15.

I prefer writing in the mornings, so to that extent I have a routine. I do reading and other things in the afternoon.

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

There is no objection to the proposal: in order to learn to be a poet, I shall try to write a sonnet. But the thing you must try to write, when you do so, is a real sonnet, and not a practice sonnet.

The basic rhymes in English are masculine, which is to say that the last syllable of the line is stressed: "lane" rhymes with "pain", but it also rhymes with "urbane" since the last syllable of "urbane" is stressed. "Lane" does not rhyme with "methane".

Great poetry does not have to be technically intricate.

At four lines, with the quatrain, we reach the basic stanza form familiar from a whole range of English poetic practice. This is the length of the ballad stanza, the verse of a hymn, and innumerable other kinds of verse.