I'm very gregarious, but I love being in the hills on my own.

I used to fish the Border rivers, but nowadays you have to queue up for a shot and I can't stand that.

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

I'm very gregarious, but I love being in the hills on my own.

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

In fact a lot of them I think are absolute baloney. Those Charles Olsens and people like that. At first I was interested in seeing what they were up to, what they were doing, why they were doing it. They never moved me in the way that one is moved by true poetry.

When I talk of hearing a poet's voice speaking, I always think of it as in the presence of the man.