I think a philistine environment should be bracing for young artists. You have to make your own enjoyment, you've got to make your own art.

Most poets' revisions are disastrous. They buckle and dent what was originally forged at a red-hot heat.

I would insist that poetry is a normal human activity and its proper concern all the things that happen to people.

I was the first Arts Council official in the archipelago to do something for what you might call indigenous music.

I do feel that a poem needs not just space, but, ideally, space around that space - space for meditation, reverie, subliminal link-ups. I sense that poetry happens at a level above or below intelligence. It doesn't come into being at a purely rational level.

Weddings and funerals have so much in common (except that in Ireland funerals are more fun - better food, better drink): at both, our senses are sharpened and we register much more than usual - a striking face or hair-do, the wind's behaviour, a bird singing.

Every Monday morning I try to remember to say "Thank you, Lord. I'm not at the Senior Staff Meeting."