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 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.

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

We simply have not kept in touch with poetry

I live in New Jersey now, which always gets a bad rap here and there, but I must say, I enjoy living here too

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