Tony Harrison

You litter poems with too much learning when you're younger.

Looking back, fire images have been constant in my poetry. As a boy, it was my job to light the fire each morning, and I remember the celebratory bonfires at the end of the war. It was from staring into fire that I began my first poetry.

I need to look back on my poetic ventures, make sense of them as a whole, and move forward... and to experiment without external demands.

It is always better to write for the whole of society than for the poetry-reading public.

I've always had the wish, the need, and the obsession to become a public poet.

You get early inoculation against the idea of success if you're a poet. When I published my first collection of sonnets, I sold about five copies; now kids study them for A level. Wanting to be successful in that other world of money or fame is not interesting. Poetry isn't like that, and it never has been.

I love being on the road with others, with a camera, but also being alone writing poetry.

I hate being called poet/dramatist/translator/director. 'Poet' covers it all for me.

I often find myself quoting from Victor Hugo after one of my theatrical ventures. 'Now that my play is a failure,' he once said, 'I find I love it all the more.' I first quoted that after 'Square Rounds' at the Olivier in 1992.

I like a direct relationship between actor and audience.

I've realised darkness and light are inter-dependent, just as death is an enhancer of life.

I hate the anglicanisation of culture, the idea that culture is genteel. It's not genteel.