"The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge Through living roots awa…"

"God is a foreman with certain definite views Who orders life in shifts of work and leisure."

"Human beings suffer, they torture one another, they get hurt and get hard. No poem or play or song can fully right a …"

"History says don't hope On this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime The longed for tidal wave Of justice …"

"Call the miracle self-healing: The utter self-revealing double-take of feeling. If there's fire on the mountain Or li…"

"Here is the great paradox of poetry and of the imaginative arts in general. Faced with the brutality of the historica…"

"My poetry journey into the wilderness of language was a journey where each point of arrival turned out to be a steppi…"

"The writing of certain poems took me to the bottom of myself, something inchoate but troubled. [...] The Troubles, yo…"

"I don't mean sound as decoration or elaboration, but the actual cadence that moves the thing along."

"Is there life before death? That's chalked up In Ballymurphy. Competence with pain, Coherent miseries, a bite and a s…"