I suppose that as you grow older some sense of an accumulating oeuvre is unavoidable.

There's always a danger of writers believing their own publicity. We live in a world of puff and solicited blurb, a world of favours and backscratching.

The gap between verse and poetry is enormous. Between good poetry and good prose the gap is much narrower

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.

A good poem is not completely a poem until it has received a critical response that grows out of the poem in an almost biological way.

I'm not against ambition and reach, but if you can say it in four lines, why waste your time saying it in more? Challenge the world by all means, but it's bad for your poetry to take steroids.

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.