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.

I just didn't want to shoot other people.

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

I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry.

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

But you'd have a job to find many of my poems which would seem to be very influenced by a particular person.

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