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

But I hang on to books. I love them. I even think they're very nice decor in a room - far better than paintings... That's not quite true!

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

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.

All those authors there, most of whom of course I've never met. That's the poetry side, that's the prose side, that's the fishing and miscellaneous behind me. You get an affection for books that you've enjoyed.

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

When I was a teacher, teachers would come into my classroom and admire my desk on which lay nothing whatever, whereas theirs were heaped with papers and books.