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

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.

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

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.

I'm not the kind of poet who arranges treasure-hunts to please the academics and keep them busy. Poetry should be surprising in deeper ways.

When I'm assembling a book I concentrate as though I were writing a poem. A truly imagined arrangement will indicate gaps and generate new poems. I re-read the new poems in my folder in the hope that this might happen.

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