I have decided to keep a full journal, in the hope that my life will perhaps seem more interesting when it is written down.

I have decided to be a poet. My father said there isn't a suitable career structure for poets and no pensions and other boring things, but I am quite decided.

Every time I start a new piece of work, I spend a long while under the duvet thinking I can't do it.

I never imagined when I began writing in the early 1960s I'd become professional and my life would be transformed.

I married two weeks after my 18th birthday, far too young, and by the time I was 23 I was a single mother of three small children, Sean, Daniel and Victoria, living in a prefab house.

It's no surprise to me that intellectuals commit suicide, go mad or die from drink. We feel things more than other people. We know the world is rotten and that chins are ruined by spots.

I have decided to keep a full journal, in the hope that my life will perhaps seem more interesting when it is written down.