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Few realise that English poetry is rather like the British constitution, surrounded by pompous precedents and reverences.

More modern poetry is written than read.

There's a lot of rage in my head. I like the friction that means there is nothing relaxing about writing a poem. I can't afford to relax in any area of life. You have to keep your senses awake to all the complacency that kicks in - particularly for the English.

The great watershed of modern poetry is French, more than English.

Poets are seen as the caretakers of language, so working with words no matter what the form is what we do.

I never had much education in English poetry as such.

I have the feeling that a lot of poets writing now are - they sort of tap dance through it.

But in a lot of ways my poems are very conventional, and it's no big deal for me to write a poem in either free verse or strict form; modern poets can, and do, do both.

I think that the job of poetry, its political job, is to refresh the idea of justice, which is going dead in us all the time.

English poetry begins whenever we decide to say the modern English language begins, and it extends as far as we decide to say that the English language extends.