You get early inoculation against the idea of success if you're a poet. When I published my first collection of sonnets, I sold about five copies; now kids study them for A level. Wanting to be successful in that other world of money or fame is not interesting. Poetry isn't like that, and it never has been.

For me, there is a paradox in poetry, which is like the paradox in tragedy. You have the most terrible subject, but it's in a form that is so sensually gratifying that it connects the surviving heart to the despairing intellect.

Poetry is all I write, whether for books or readings or for the National Theatre or for the opera house and concert hall or even for TV.

Poetry Quotes