How do poems grow? They grow out of your life.

You don't help people in your poems. I've been trying to help people all my life - that's my trouble.

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

We all write poems it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.

Each word bears its weight so you have to read my poems quite slowly.

I like poems that are little games.

I still read Donne particularly his love poems.

Sometimes poetry is inspired by the conversation entered into by reading other poems.

Everyone thinks they're going to write one book of poems or one novel.

No poems can please for long or live that are written by water drinkers.

I don't write poems and put them to music. Just let things flow.

My horizon on humanity is enlarged by reading the writers of poems seeing a painting listening to some music some opera which has nothing at all to do with a volatile human condition or struggle or whatever. It enriches me as a human being.

All I wanted to do was write - at the time poems and prose too. I guess my ambition was simply to make money however I could to keep myself going in some modest way and I didn't need much I was unmarried at the time no children.

You must understand the whole of life not just one little part of it. That is why you must read that is why you must look at the skies that is why you must sing and dance and write poems and suffer and understand for all that is life.

I grew up in a bookless house - my parents didn't read poetry so if I hadn't had the chance to experience it at school I'd never have experienced it. But I loved English and I was very lucky in that I had inspirational English teachers Miss Scriven and Mr. Walker and they liked us to learn poems by heart which I found I loved doing.

Yes I do often write poems from the mind but I hope I don't ignore feelings and emotions.

In a funny way poems are suited to modern life. They're short they're intense. Nobody has time to read a 700-page book. People read magazines and a poem takes less time than an article.