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To different minds, poetry may present different phases. To me, the reverent faith of the people I lived among, and their faithful everyday living, was poetry; blossoms and trees and blue shies were poetry. God himself was poetry.

I see poetry as spiritual medicine.

At school, I was never given a sense that poetry was something flowery or light. It's a complex and controlled way of using language. Rhythms and the music of it are very important. But the difficulty is that poetry makes some kind of claim of honesty.

Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it.

Poetry and prayer are very similar.

Poetry is a form of necessary speech... I have sought to restore the aura of sacred practice that accompanies true poetic creation, to honor both the rational and the irrational elements of poetry.

I am not quite a poet but I am something of the kind.

That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.

I think poetry is able to say things in such a small, perfect way that are so hard to say. I think it's a perfect medium for expressing difficult ideas and concepts and feelings. It's one of my great loves.

There's a fierce practicality and empiricism which the whole imaginative, lyrical aspect of poetry comes from.