I think all writing is an attempt to complicate and subvert the dominant narrative. Writing personalizes statistics. It puts a face and a name on a number. I suppose in that sense it's always political.

I think all writing is political. All writing shows a preoccupation with something, whatever that thing might be, and by putting pen to paper you are establishing a hierarchy of some sort - this emotion over that emotion, this memory over that memory, this thought over another. And isn't that process of establishing a hierarchy on the page a kind of political act?

Nabokov quote: "I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child."

New York allows you to go deeper into the person you want to be. You're able to explore whatever your specific interests might be. You can eat good Japanese food if you want to eat good Japanese food. You can go and see your favorite author reading, and you can still listen to Radio Ulster on the internet as you have your breakfast. I love that.

It seems to me that metaphors come down to a certain idea of interconnectedness - that everything relates to everything else. Metaphors don't believe in autonomy. And in the end, perhaps that idea of interconnectedness is a moral position.

I don't think there's any law where you have to read a poem and immediately understand it.

Writing a poem is a more personal experience, I think, than writing prose. And perhaps reading a poem is a more personal experience than reading prose, though that's harder to say.