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There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.

I don't live for poetry. I live far more than anybody else does.

Poetry at its best can do you a lot of harm.

Poems seem to have a life of their own. They tell you when enough is enough.

If I'm the people's poet, then I ought to be in people's hands - and, I hope, in their heart.

I have not the slightest pretension to call my verses poetry; I write now and then for no other purpose than to relieve depression or to improve my English.

There'll always be working people in my poems because I grew up with them, and I am a poet of memory.

My poems are always about my life in one way or another.