People who read poetry, for example, like the feel, the heft and the smell of a book.

I once stood in the middle of New York city watching my name go round the electronic zipper sign in Times Square and I felt pretty thrilled, but not quite as thrilled as I felt when I saw my name in the Examiner for the first time.

The Huddersfield that I like best is a large town with a big heart and an open mind.

I intend 'Dämmerung' to be an ironic meditation on the financial rewards of poetry and a tragicomic lament on the passing of time and the changes in literary taste. The other poets mentioned are my poetic cohort from the U.K. I wrote the piece in situ, as it were, while making a television documentary about World War I in Germany.

As far as I can tell, there are two kinds of poets: those who want to tell stories and sing songs, and those who want to work out the chemical equation for language and pass on their experiments as poetry.

We still need a voice that thinks before it speaks.

And wonder, dread and war have lingered in that land where loss and love in turn have held the upper hand.