I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.

I credit poetry for making this space-walk possible.

The appointment [in Harvard] gave me economic safety, writerly support, and intellectual self-respectplus eight months to myself every year.

I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.

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.

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

Then as the years went on and my listening became more deliberate, I would climb up on an arm of our big sofa to get my ear closer to the wireless speaker.