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I am not a theologian or a historian, and I feel no call to become a defender of the faith, so in my case, the search for what remains valuable focuses on language itself: Catholic prayer, ritual, the naming of things.

The rosary was said every evening. I always liked that sentence about the medieval Churches, that they were the Bibles of the poor. The Church was my first book and I would think it is still my most important book.

Second, we also got a more authentic liturgy of the people of God, in the vernacular language.

If I were assigned poems I suppose I'd write more of them but it is entirely voluntary and for the most part ignored in the market sense of the word so the language to me is most intimate, most important, most sublime and most satisfying when it gets done.

Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.

The music of language became extremely important to me, and obvious to me. By the time I was seven I was writing myself. I was a poet.

In poetry, I have, since very young, loved poetry in translation. The Chinese, the French, the Russians, Italians, Indians and early Celts: the formality of the translator's voice, their measured breath and anxiety moves me as it lingers over the original.

I try to show what it is about language and music that enthralls, because I think those are the two elements of poetry.

Poetry and prayer are very similar.

For me, poetry was... the fastest way to express what I was feeling, what I was going through.