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

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.

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

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.

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

One will never again look at a birch tree, after the Robert Frost poem, in exactly the same way.

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.