At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure.

Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained.

Whether it be a matter of personal relations within a marriage or political initiatives within a peace process, there is no sure-fire do-it-yourself kit.

Whether it be a matter of personal relations within a marriage or political initiatives within a peace process, there is no sure-fire do-it-yourself kit.

In fact, in lyric poetry, truthfulness becomes recognizable as a ring of truth within the medium itself.

Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it.

A public expectation, it has to be said, not of poetry as such but of political positions variously approvable by mutually disapproving groups.

I credit poetry for making this space-walk possible.

Manifesting that order of poetry where we can at last grow up to that which we stored up as we grew.

The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis, and those crises are often very intimate also.