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

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.

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

Form is a straitjacket in the way that a straitjacket was a straitjacket for Houdini.

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 was born in Northern Ireland in 1951. I lived most of my life there until 1986 or 1987

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