If you were going to choose a way of making your way in this world and a place to start from, you might not choose poetry and you might not choose Huddersfield.

I have to make myself write, sometimes. In the space between poems, you somehow forget how to do it, where to begin. It was good to be task - based for a while. I just came downstairs each day, picked the one I was going to do that day, and wrote.

In all the poems I've written I've not really engaged in politics, and when I've found myself moving in that direction I've always stopped myself.

I'd never really been content with just churning out these slim volumes every three or four years. I've always tried to think of poetry as an active ingredient in the language rather than just something that appears between the covers of thin books.