The point of poetry is to be acutely discomforting, to prod and provoke, to poke us in the eye, to punch us in the nose, to knock us off our feet, to take our breath away.

Last year I was a judge for a prize in England, the T.S. Eliot Prize, so I read everything that was published in England last year.

Your average pop song or film is a very sophisticated item, with very sophisticated ways of listening and viewing that we have not really consciously developed over the years - because we were having such a good time

For whatever reason, people, including very well-educated people or people otherwise interested in reading, do not read poetry

I live in New Jersey now, which always gets a bad rap here and there, but I must say, I enjoy living here too

I do a lot of readings.

On the other hand, at some level the mass of unresolved issues in Northern Ireland does influence the fact that there are so many good writers in the place.