So many schools are getting rid of music programs and it's really sad because I know that when I started singing and stuff it was something that I always wanted to do and I never believed in myself to be able to do it.

Religion is compulsory in English schools you know.

There is so much that is positive wonderful even about state schools. At a state school your kids will learn to live alongside and appreciate other kids from many diverse and different cultures.

I wanted to reimagine the role in a way that was respectful of its traditional responsibilities but made them part of a wider pattern of poetry about national incidents events preoccupations and to spend a great deal of time going to schools trying to demystify poetry.

Thanks partly to the kind of poets that we now have and partly to funding there's been a gigantic shift in the way poetry is perceived... Poems on the Underground poets in schools football clubs zoos.

I certainly derived my skills as a prose writer from my scrutiny of poetry and of the individual word. But schools don't do things like that anymore - tracking words down to their roots.

Let a hundred flowers bloom let a hundred schools of thought contend.

I've studied various schools of thought... I acknowledge that some Muslims consider music prohibited but I've found a lot of evidence from the life of the Prophet to show that he allowed certainly but even encouraged music at certain times.

For industry to settle in a country you first need electricity for electricity you need some trained workers for trained workers you need some schools for schools you need some money for money you need some industry.

If you really believe that you're making a difference and that you can leave a legacy of better schools and jobs and safer streets why would you not spend the money? The objective is to improve the schools bring down crime build affordable housing clean the streets - not to have a fair fight.