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.

My body was braille for the creeping influences.

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.

The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole.

In fact, in lyric poetry, truthfulness becomes recognizable as a ring of truth within the medium itself.

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