We simply have not kept in touch with poetry

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

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

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

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.

The ground swell is what’s going to sink you as well as being what buoys you up. These are clichés also, of course, and I’m sometimes interested in how much one can get away with.

Of course, you can't legislate for how people are going to read.