I certainly am interested in accessibility, clarity, and immediacy.

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

If the poem has no obvious destination, there's a chance that we'll be all setting off on an interesting ride.

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.

For whatever reason, people, including very well-educated people or people otherwise interested in reading, do not read poetry

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

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.