When you get onto the big wheel of writing (or the little wheels within wheels of poetry), it seems clear to me that the people you look to and feel an affinity for are not - to begin with, anyway - the ones who get on immediately before and after you, still less the ones who've been on for ages - you want their seats - but the half-strangers you see through the struts half a cycle (half a generation) away, falling as you rise, rising as you fall. There were three poets I had my eye on - probably all appalled to be mentioned in each other's company, and by me: Joseph Brodsky, Tom Paulin and, most intimately though I knew him least, Ian Hamilton. When I sent him a copy of my first book, I realised I'd even purloined his initials for my title.

LRB 7 July 1994 | PDF Download