It's practically my subject, my theme: solitude and community; the weirdness and terrors of solitude: the stifling and consolations of community. Also, the consolations of solitude.

Wherever I've travelled I could never quite shake off a homeward gravitation towards Ulster. I am a recovering Protestant. Belfast, in particular, will always be a part of me, that dark unlovely town with its Sunday silences.

Although every poem I suppose is an attempt, I suppose it's religon - the notion of art as consolation, the belief that "everything will be all right." I suppose I can't finally seriously believe that we're not immortal. So yes, in some sense everything is going to be all right.