That's one of the great things about poetry; one realises that one does one's little turn - that you're just part of the great crop, as it were.

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

Obviously one of the things that poets from Northern Ireland and beyond - had to try to make sense of was what was happening on a day-to-day political level.

Words want to find chimes with each other, things want to connect.

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.

Living at that pitch, on that edge, is something which many poets engage in to some extent.

I believe that these devices like repetition and rhyme are not artificial, that they're not imposed, somehow, on the language.