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 dotted line my father's ashplant made On Sandymount Strand Is something else the tide won't wash away.

I suppose I'm saying that defiance is actually part of the lyric job

Poetry is language in orbit.

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

Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it.

The fact of the matter is that the most unexpected and miraculous thing in my life was the arrival in it of poetry itself - as a vocation and an elevation almost.