The Ireland I now inhabit is one that these Irish contemporaries have helped to imagine.

Behaviour that's admired is the path to power among people everywhere.

Once off the bush The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour. I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not. -Blackberry picking

The external reality and inner dynamic of happenings in Northern Ireland between 1968 and 1974 were symptomatic of change, violent change admittedly, but change nevertheless, and for the minority living there, change had been long overdue.

Memory has always been fundamental for me. In fact, remembering what I had forgotten is the way most of the poems get started.

All I know is a door into the dark

I am not a playwright. A playwright would take "Antigone" and hit it a few clouts and knock it out of shape and restructure it. My versioning was strictly verbal.