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.

The passionate controversies of one era are viewed as sterile preoccupations by another for knowledge alters what we seek as well as what we find.

Idle people are often bored and bored people unless they sleep a lot are cruel. It is not accident that boredom and cruelty are great preoccupations in our time.