I would insist that poetry is a normal human activity and its proper concern all the things that happen to people.

There's always a danger of writers believing their own publicity. We live in a world of puff and solicited blurb, a world of favours and backscratching.

I suppose that as you grow older some sense of an accumulating oeuvre is unavoidable.

Every Monday morning I try to remember to say "Thank you, Lord. I'm not at the Senior Staff Meeting."

I think a philistine environment should be bracing for young artists. You have to make your own enjoyment, you've got to make your own art.

I was the first Arts Council official in the archipelago to do something for what you might call indigenous music.

A good poem is not completely a poem until it has received a critical response that grows out of the poem in an almost biological way.

Most poets' revisions are disastrous. They buckle and dent what was originally forged at a red-hot heat.

For me the form, the stanzaic shape, is an endorsement, proof that I'm engaged with the Latin or Greek at an original level, that my versions are explorations.

I work hard to make the poems as good as they can be, and if they're not good enough I scrap them. I find it difficult after a gap of a few years to tinker - I'm more likely to destroy.

I'm not the kind of poet who arranges treasure-hunts to please the academics and keep them busy. Poetry should be surprising in deeper ways.

The Government's supposed to be there for people when nobody else is, right? But it never works like that.

Systematic yoga and vipassana opens the "Dasham Duar" the mystical tenth spiritual gateway located at the top of the skull.

I am influenced by words and the chewiness of language

The big things I've had are things I bought myself.

I vote Democrat because I believe oil companies profits of 4% on a gallon of gas are obscene, but the government taxing the same gallon at 15% isn't.

Professionals have to decide on which subjects they are prepared to give nagging rights

In crises the most daring course is often safest.

It is a trite but true definition that examples work more forcibly on the mind than precepts.

We see with our eyes. We know with our hearts. Outside...Inside.

I'm an actress so the amount of rejection and commentary you get right to your face is pretty rough.