The thing about writing is that if you have the impulse, you will find the time.

But that citizen's perception was also at one with the truth in recognizing that the very brutality of the means by which the IRA were pursuing change was destructive of the trust upon which new possibilities would have to be based.

The way we are living, timorous or bold, will have been our life.

Sink every impulse like a bolt. Secure The bastion of sensation. Do not waver Into language. Do not waver in it.

The external reality and inner dynamic of happenings in Northern Ireland between 1968 and 1974 were symptomatic of change, violent change admittedly, but change nevertheless, and for the minority living there, change had been long overdue.

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.

Im a firm believer in learning by heart.