As writers and readers as sinners and citizens our realism and our aesthetic sense make us wary of crediting the positive note.

Broadcasters or politicians or writers who think that they are respecting Struggle Street the battlers by dumbing things down into one-line sound bites are not respecting them they are treating them with contempt. It's our job above all in politics to tackle the big issues and to explain them.

I know many writers who first dictate passages then polish what they have dictated. I speak then I polish - occasionally I do windows.

All I knew about Ethiopia was from a few records that I like as well as what I read about the famine. But you get there and it's another world. It's filled with art and music and poetry and intellectuals and writers - all kinds of people.

I began the way nearly everybody I ever heard of - I began writing poetry. And I find that to be quite usual with writers their trying their hand at poetry.

I don't like political poetry and I don't write it. If this question was pointing towards that I think it is missing the point of the American tradition which is always apolitical even when the poetry comes out of politically active writers.

I'm quite sure that most writers would sustain real poetry if they could but it takes devotion and talent.

I have experienced healing through other writers' poetry but there's no way I can sit down to write in the hope a poem will have healing potential. If I do I'll write a bad poem.

I'm not really one for fancy big words and poetry and the scriptwriters worked very hard on 'Paradise Lost' to translate it.

I don't think poetry is something that can be taught. We can encourage young writers but what you can't teach them is the very essence of poetry.