Irish readers, British readers, American readers: is it odd that I haven't a clue about how differently they react? Or better say, I cannot find the words to describe my hunch about them.

The appointment [in Harvard] gave me economic safety, writerly support, and intellectual self-respectplus eight months to myself every year.

A public expectation, it has to be said, not of poetry as such but of political positions variously approvable by mutually disapproving groups.

Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun. ~from the poem "Digging

One of the very first poems I wrote was Docker That fist would drop a hammer on a Catholic and one of the sturdiest was Requiem for the Croppies, written 50 years after 1916 [the year of the Easter Rising]. Being responsible and what it means, what it demands, have indeed preoccupied me maybe too much. But this is it, this is the thing, this is what you're up against.

Suspect too much sweet talk but never close your mind.

I credit poetry for making this space-walk possible.