The Bogholes Might Be Atlantic Seepage. The

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.

Yet There Are Times When A Deeper Need Enters, When We Want The Poem To Be Not Only Pleasurably Right But Compellingly Wise, Not Only A Surprising Variation Played Upon The World, But A Re-tuning Of The World Itself.

Sink Every Impulse Like A Bolt. Secure The Bastion Of Sensation. Do Not Waver Into Language. Do Not Waver In It.

The Ireland I Now Inhabit Is One That These Irish Contemporaries Have Helped To Imagine.

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.