I like to use simple words, but in a complicated way..

I think all poets must feel this: that there is constantly something new to be discovered in the language. It's like a thrilling encounter, and you c….

If I felt, in the event of a royal wedding, inspired to write about people coming together in marriage or civil partnership, I would just be grateful….

For me, poetry is the music of being human. And also a time machine by which we can travel to who we are and to who we will become..

Poets deal in writing about feelings and trying to find the language and images for intense feelings..

Poets sing our human music for us..

If we think of what's up ahead, with climate change and wars over water, it's very frightening..

The stars are filming us for no one..

Having a child takes you back to all those parts of your own childhood that you had hidden away..

Christmas is taken very seriously in this household. I believe in Father Christmas and there's no way I'd do anything to undermine that belief..

My prose is turgid, it just hasn't got any energy.

I think poetry can help children deal with the other subjects on the curriculum by enabling them to see a subject in a new way..

When you have a child, your previous life seems like someone else's. It's like living in a house and suddenly finding a room you didn't know was ther….

Where I lived - winter and hard earth.I sat in my cold stone roomchoosing tough words, granite, flint,to break the ice. My broken heart -I tried that….

I think the dangers are different now. Our abuse of the planet and our resources is an anxiety..

I'll be left writing picture books and fairy tales.

It is a moon wrapped in brown paper..

You have me like a drawing, erased, coloured in, untitled, signed by your tongue..

I always wanted a child. Being a mother is the central thing in my life..

I like to think that I'm a sort of poet for our times..

As anyone who has the slightest knowledge of my work knows, I have little in common with Larkin, who was tall, taciturn and thin-on-top, and unlike h….