I still have a feeling that I haven't written the best that I can write. I think all poets must feel this: that there is constantly something new to be discovered in the language. It's like a thrilling encounter, and you can find things.

Poets deal in writing about feelings and trying to find the language and images for intense feelings.

I think the dangers are different now. Our abuse of the planet and our resources is an anxiety.

If I felt, in the event of a royal wedding, inspired to write about people coming together in marriage or civil partnership, I would just be grateful to have an idea for the poem. And if I didn't, I'd ignore it.

The poetry and transgression that was so much of surrealism's anarchic force has been recruited into mainstream culture. It has been made commonplace by television and magazine merchandising, by computer games and Internet visuals, by film and MTV, by the fashion shoot.

I don't really care who gets their inspiration from where, it's the end results that count.

For me, personally, the most interesting music comes from the popular sector - from film and pop music - since contemporary classical music got stuck and went into directions where it lost a lot of the public by over-intellectualizing.

I'd never had any problem finding inspiration; Ireland was always just there, you know? All this richness of culture was there to tap into.