I Don't Want My Poems To Be

I Deeply Adored My Mum. She Was An Extraordinary Person, Even For The Prejudice I'm Likely To Have. She Was Beautiful, Amusing, A Tremendous Elaborator Of Things Into Comic Proportions And Extravagant In Her Imagination.

While Also, Importantly, Not Wanting To Dumb It Down Or Pretend The Days Of 'difficult' Poetry Are Over, Because We Live In A Pluralist Culture And There's Room For 'difficult' Poetry Alongside Rap And Everything Else. And Poetry Won't Be For Everyone, But Everyone Should Have The Choice.

Jenni Fagan Is The Real Thing, And The Panopticon Is A Real Treat: Maturely Alive To The Pains Of Maturing, And Cleverly Amused As Well As Appalled By What It Finds In The World.

But In A Lot Of Ways My Poems Are Very Conventional, And It's No Big Deal For Me To Write A Poem In Either Free Verse Or Strict Form; Modern Poets Can, And Do, Do Both.

I Don't Want My Poems To Be Sentimental, Though I Do Acknowledge That Sentiment Is Probably Rather Under-reported In A Lot Of People's Feelings A Lot Of The Time.