I suppose for whatever reason I actively welcome being put down, something which perhaps goes back to my upbringing - that accusation of not being worthy which could be laid at one's door.

It's not as if I'm trying to write crossword puzzles to which one might find an answer at the back of the book or anything like that.

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.

Frost isn’t exactly despised but not enough people have worked out what a brilliant poet he was.

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

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

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.