To be an Irish poet after that 19th century in which there was such a struggle toward the light, I think still will always be in the hearts of the writers of my generation and the generations before and hopefully the generations after.

It has always seemed to me a great honor to be called an Irish poet. I don't think I will ever lose that, but it's also a great honor to be a woman poet. I put those things together.

I have always loved American poetry, which is very different from Irish poetry.

Love will heal What language fails to know

. . . We love fog because it shifts old anomalies into the elements surrounding them. It gives relief from a way of seeing

Poetry is one of the most fugitive arts: it can be assigned to memory, taken and hidden in the mind, smuggled into smoky cabin back rooms, recited there and then conveyed only by speech to another person. It is therefore the most likely to survive colonization.

The United States' poetry emerged when there was a high literacy rate in the United States, even in the 19th century. People read the poetry when it was written. In Ireland, there was a poor literacy rate and people remember that poetry. That was handed on as a memorial tradition.

I loved the illusion, the conviction, the desire - whatever you want to call it - that the words were agents rather than extensions of reality. That they made my life happen, rather than just recorded it happening.

If I defer the grief I will diminish the gift.