The Aim Of Poetry And

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.

Anything Can Happen Is Also, Incidentally, A Poem That Arose From Teaching. I'd Talked About The Horace Ode (i, 34) [on Which The Poem Is Based] In A Lecture I Gave At Harvard In The Fall Of 2000 Entitled Bright Boltsand Remembered It After The Twin Towers Attack.

Loyalism, Or Unionism, Or Protestantism, Or Whatever You Want To Call It, In Northern Ireland - It Operates Not As A Class System, But A Caste System.

History Says, Don’t Hope On This Side Of The Grave, But Then, Once In A Lifetime The Longed-for Tidal Wave Of Justice Can Rise Up, And Hope And History Rhyme

Nowadays, What An Award Gives Is A Sense Of Solidarity With The Poetry Guild, As It Were: Sustenance Coming From The Assent Of Your Peers On The Judging Panel.