The poems I did write there [in Harvard] include Alphabets the 1984 Phi Beta Kappa poem and A Sofa in the Forties. And, of course, the John Harvard poem for the 350th anniversary Villanelle for an Anniversary.

The main thing is to write for the joy of it. Cultivate a work-lust that imagines its haven like your hands at night dreaming the sun in the sunspot of a breast. You are fasted now, light-headed, dangerous. Take off from here.

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

Harvard created wonderful conditions for me as a writerbut the writing was done, almost entirely, when I got home.

Loyalism, or Unionism, or Protestantism, or whatever you want to call it, in Northern Ireland - it operates not as a class system, but a caste system.

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

Harvard meant a lot in my writing life from the beginning, even though I didnt actually do much composition on the spot.