When I was asked to be Writer in Residence at Edinburgh I thought, you can't teach poetry. This is ridiculous.

And in a way, that's been a help to me, because I take great passions for a particular poet - sometimes it lasts for many years, sometimes only for a while. This happens to everybody.

I used to have a great love for Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, the big boys of the last century.

I said I have no powers of invention. Well, I also have no powers of mimicry.

People haven't got the interest in long long works these days. A lack of interest which I share.

However, I learned something. I thought that if the young person, the student, has poetry in him or her, to offer them help is like offering a propeller to a bird.

If I wrote a play with four characters every single one of them would talk like me regardless of age or sex.