A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk..

Finish the day's writing when you still want to continue..

Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how ….

i wish i was away in Ingo far across the briny sea sailing over deepest waters where neither care nore worry trouble me.

In a world without air all you breathe is adventure!.

The human longing for story is so powerful, so primitive, that it seems like something not learned, but locked into our genes..

For you where never my blood sister so no more shall I call you little sister.

A novel, in the end, is a container, a shape which you are trying to pour your story into..

If the garden of Eden really exists it does so moment by moment, fragmented and tough, cropping up like a fan of buddleia high up in the gutter of a ….

It is a violation which has obsessed the tyrants of the twentieth century. They do not want simply to kill their opponents, but to liquidate them, to….

Count Dracula had directed me to go to the Golden Krone Hotel, which I found, to my great delight, to be thoroughly old-fashioned, for of course I wa….

I was always influenced by language..

To try to expunge an individual's history is a terrible violation..

However, I began to submit poems to British magazines, and some were accepted. It was a great moment to see my first poems published. It felt like en….

I can remember being in my pram: children stayed in their prams much longer then than they do now. A big bouncy pram with black covers and a hood wit….

As individuals, we are shaped by story from the time of birth; we are formed by what we are told by our parents, our teachers, our intimates..

We are creatures of story..

Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn’t work, throw it away..

I have learned so much from working with other poets, travelling and reading with them, spending days discussing poems in progress. There is the sens….

Once one habit peels away the others follow it. You have to hold on, or the next thing you'll find yourself parading down the street in your nightdre….

When you are young you don't always realise how full of doubts everybody is..