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.

The only difference between me and others is that they think they can change something with cute little poems nice cards or embracing trees and being nice to little lapdogs.

I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art poems schools theology displacing all that exists or that has been produced anywhere in the past under opposite influences.

Of the individual poems some are more lyric and some are more descriptive or narrative. Each poem is fixed in a moment. All those moments written or read together take on the movement and architecture of a narrative.

I've got some incredible fans actually - so loyal and they make me birthday cards and Christmas cards. I got this package of poems and artwork based around the songs. They've got this thing called 'Floetry' where they all have to put in artwork. They've set up their own competitions and stuff which is kind of amazing.

Early on if I was alone two three nights in a row I'd start writing poems about suicide.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long and the age of the great epics is past.