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Because, in fact, women, feminists, do read my poetry, and they read it often with the power of their political interpretation. I don't care; that's what poetry is supposed to do.

Women are treated as unjustly in poetry as in life. The feminine ones are not idealistic, and the idealistic not feminine.

Some people are suspicious of others who have more than one talent. I've had poets tell me to my face that an actress can't be a poet.

As far as I was concerned, it was the absence of women in the poetic tradition which allowed women in the poems to be simplified. The voice of a woman poet would, I was sure, have precluded such distortion. It did not exist.

Never use the word 'audience.' The very idea of a public, unless the poet is writing for money, seems wrong to me. Poets don't have an 'audience'. They're talking to a single person all the time.

It's always good when women win things in fiction because it tends to be more male-dominated, unlike poetry, which is more equal.

The poets whom I knew then were all men and all seemed dauntingly sure of themselves - although I am sure that really they were as uncertain as I was.

If the poetry world celebrate its female stars at the true level of their productivity and influence, poetry would wind up being a largely female world, and the men would leave.