I remain loyal to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in music and to Shakespeare and Jane Austen in literature..

There comes a time when you have to trust your own judgment, when you must close your eyes and let your instinct rule you..

I have always made my own rules, in poetry as in life - though I have tried of late to cooperate more with my family. I do, however, believe that wit….

When everything is for 'fun' nothing is for the good..

I'm not really quiet or shy. Ask any of my friends! But I always ground my poetry in life itself. Poetry is an art of language, though, so I am alway….

I dislike literary jargon and never use it. Criticism has only one function and that is to help readers read and understand literature. It is not a s….

My earlier poems were sadder than my poems are today, perhaps because I wrote them in confusion or when I was unhappy. But I am not a melancholy pers….

The sea is as near as we come to another world..

I work very hard on all my poems, but most of the work consists of trying not to sound as if I had worked. I try to make them sound as natural as pos….

I am now seventy, rather glad, really, that I won't live to see the horrors to come in the 21st century..

democracy is dying. We are ruled by faceless bureaucrats and lecherous puritans. ... You think about it. 'All right for me but not for you' is their ….

Blake has always been a favorite, the lyrics, not so much the prophetic books, but I suppose Yeats influenced me more as a young poet, and the Americ….

I married a young Englishman in Cambridge in 1955 and have lived in Britain every since..

A hobbyhorse can be a tiring ride for nonenthusiasts..

I play with language a great deal in my poems, and I enjoy that. I try to condense language, that is, I try to express complicated but I hope real em….

I don't like poetry that just slaps violent words on a canvas, as it were..

Peter Lucas and I live in Durham but spend a great of time in North Wales, where we have a cottage in the mountains, and in Vermont, USA, with my sis….

Yes, I do often write poems from the mind, but I hope I don't ignore feelings and emotions..

I think a poet, like a painter, should be a craftsperson..

I write, or used to write, to explain to myself situations I couldn't otherwise solve or understand. Meditation comes very naturally to me..

Poets should ignore most criticism and get on with making poetry..