While also, importantly, not wanting to dumb it down or pretend the days of 'difficult' poetry are over, because we live in a pluralist culture and t….

I am a vigilant monarchist. I want to see things evolve. The direction the monarchy seems to be moving in - towards a more mainland-European model - ….

I deeply adored my mum. She was an extraordinary person, even for the prejudice I'm likely to have. She was beautiful, amusing, a tremendous elaborat….

I write between 5.30am and 9.00. That way, I hope I carry over something from my dream time..

I'm ensuring my place in heaven..

Jenni Fagan is the real thing, and The Panopticon is a real treat: maturely alive to the pains of maturing, and cleverly amused as well as appalled b….

In a fragile environment, we need to be aware of ourselves as members of a uniquely powerful species living among other species who are quite as inte….

I don't want my poems to be sentimental, though I do acknowledge that sentiment is probably rather under-reported in a lot of people's feelings a lot….

Like a lot of people, for a long time I thought that the road to hell is paved with bad sequels..

Poems are a hotline to our hearts, and we forget this emotional power at our peril.

I like eating out. I like buying beautiful paintings and being surrounded by beautiful things. I have to finance that life. I can barely afford a pen….

Honor the miraculousness of the ordinary..

But Wordsworth is the poet I admire above all others..

I get up at 5.30am, sluice myself and have two Weetabix and some mint tea, before starting to write by 6am..

But in a lot of ways my poems are very conventional, and it's no big deal for me to write a poem in either free verse or strict form; modern poets ca….

I read ' Treasure Island' for the first time at university. And I started to notice then how unresolved some things were. Later, I realised that Stev….

Each sudden gust of light explains itself as flames, but neither they, nor even bombs redoubled on the hills tonight can quite include me in their fe….

I shall try to write a poem that is about the moment but doesn't betray things that are true to me as a poet..

I am writing more than I have ever done. My life has come back to me in the most extraordinary way..

But I can't and don't ever want to write bell-yanking confetti-tossing hat-throwing poems..