When I was teaching, I gave a lot of my mind and anxiety to it. There was always something clenched and anxious in me until the classes were over.

Whether it be a matter of personal relations within a marriage or political initiatives within a peace process, there is no sure-fire do-it-yourself kit.

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

A writer is not different from a reader, in that the common ragbag of orthodoxies and assumptions is what a poet has to work with as well.

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

I rhyme… to see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

Two buckets were easier carried than one. / I grew up in between.