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

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

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

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.

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.

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