When I was asked to be Writer in Residence at Edinburgh I thought, you can’t teach poetry. This is ridiculous.

I used to fish the Border rivers, but nowadays you have to queue up for a shot and I can’t stand that.

And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn’t think so.

People haven’t got the interest in long long works these days. A lack of interest which I share.

Well, I’m a light traveller. I chuck things away.

And in a way, that’s been a help to me, because I take great passions for a particular poet – sometimes it lasts for many years, sometimes only for a while. This happens to everybody.

All I write about is what’s happened to me and to people I know, and the better I know them, the more likely they are to be written about.

But you’d have a job to find many of my poems which would seem to be very influenced by a particular person.

I don’t think of myself all the time.

When I talk of hearing a poet’s voice speaking, I always think of it as in the presence of the man.