A Writer Is Not Different From A

It Is Difficult At Times To Repress The Thought That History Is About As Instructive As An Abattoir; That Tacitus Was Right And That Peace Is Merely The Desolation Left Behind After The Decisive Operations Of Merciless Power.

Poetry Is Language In Orbit.

Getting Started, Keeping Going, Getting Started Again - In Art And In Life, It Seems To Me This Is The Essential Rhythm Not Only Of Achievement But Of Survival, The Ground Of Convinced Action, The Basis Of Self-esteem And The Guarantee Of Credibility In Your Lives, Credibility To Yourselves As Well As To Others.

One Of The Very First Poems I Wrote Was Docker That Fist Would Drop A Hammer On A Catholic And One Of The Sturdiest Was Requiem For The Croppies, Written 50 Years After 1916 [the Year Of The Easter Rising]. Being Responsible And What It Means, What It Demands, Have Indeed Preoccupied Me Maybe Too Much. But This Is It, This Is The Thing, This Is What You're Up Against.

Poetry Cannot Afford To Lose Its Fundamentally Self-delighting Inventiveness, Its Joy In Being A Process Of Language As Well As A Representation Of Things In The World.