I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.

Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow next week next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.

If you are going to sin sin against God not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't.

The older I've got the less I find myself going back and re-reading or really reading new fiction or poetry.

I don't look on poetry as closed works. I feel they're going on all the time in my head and I occasionally snip off a length.

I was kind of an outcast in school 'cause I always kept to myself and was writing poetry and then going on tour with my brother band all the time so kids didn't know what to make of me.

I think that the job of poetry its political job is to refresh the idea of justice which is going dead in us all the time.

Well if this is poetry I'm certainly never going to write any myself.

If you were going to choose a way of making your way in this world and a place to start from you might not choose poetry and you might not choose Huddersfield.

I think there's no excuse for the American poetry reader not knowing a good deal about what is going on in the rest of the world.

I think that concrete poetry seems to have as far as I can see come to a kind of a dead end. It doesn't seem to be going any further than it went in its high period of about five or six years ago.

Concrete poets continue to turn out beautiful things but to me they're more visual than oral and they almost really belong on the wall rather than in a book. I haven't the least idea of where poetry is going.

When I hit a block regardless of what I am writing what the subject matter is or what's going on in the plot I go back and I read Pablo Neruda's poetry. I don't actually speak Spanish so I read it translation. But I always go back to Neruda. I don't know why but it calms me calms my brain.

Meet some people who care about poetry the way you do. You'll have that readership. Keep going until you know you're doing work that's worthy. And then see what happens. That's my advice.

The irony is going to work every day became the subject of probably my best poetry.

I work on words mostly toward them being poetry or short stories and then some of those become songs. They all find their place in the world but they all start off in the same place. I'm always painting and drawing as well and it's an ongoing creative assignment.

The middle class is doing fine in fiction. But it's not what gets me going. I love the working class and everyone from it I've met and think they're incredibly witty inventive - there's a lot of poetry there.

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.

I think there are things in my story that have helped my creativity. Your father being killed for instance is one of the best things that could happen to a kid if he's going to write poetry or songs.

When you're going through something whether it's a wonderful thing like having a child or a sad thing like losing somebody you often feel like 'Oh my God I'm so overwhelmed I'm dealing with this huge thing on my own.' In fact poetry's a nice reminder that no everybody goes through it. These are universal experiences.

As an actor there is room for a certain amount of creativity but you're always ultimately going to be saying somebody else's words. I don't think I'd have the stamina skill or ability to write a novel but I'd love to write short stories and poetry because those are my two passions.

Everyone thinks they're going to write one book of poems or one novel.

A poet's work is to name the unnameable to point at frauds to take sides start arguments shape the world and stop it going to sleep.

I had a big Akita Yoshi who was fabulous. I loved him. We lost him when he was 12 and I've never been able to replace him. Normally most people lose a pet and get another and keep going on. But it just felt wrong to me it felt disloyal.