I always tell students that writing a poem and publishing it are two quite separate things, and you should write what you have to write, and if you're afraid it's going to upset someone, don't publish it.

Bloody men are like bloody buses - you wait for about a year and as soon as one approaches your stop two or three others appear.

I've said what I'm prepared to say in my poems, and then journalists think that you're going to tell them a whole lot more.

I like buying clothes, especially as I get a tax-deductible allowance.

I have a theory that if you've got the kind of parents who want to send you to boarding school, you're probably better off at boarding school.

The interesting thing is that you don't often meet a poet who doesn't have a sense of humour, and some of them do keep it out of their poems because they're afraid of being seen as light versifiers.

I always tell students that writing a poem and publishing it are two quite separate things, and you should write what you have to write, and if you're afraid it's going to upset someone, don't publish it.