I shall try to write a poem that is about the moment but doesn't betray things that are true to me as a poet.

Well, it's a badge of honour for any self-respecting poet to be criticized by Auberon Waugh. But in a lot of ways my poems are very conventional, and it's no big deal for me to write a poem in either free verse or strict form; modern poets can, and do, do both.

But Wordsworth is the poet I admire above all others.

If people connect me with the Romantics in general, they probably connect me most with Keats. But Wordsworth is the poet I admire above all others.

But in a lot of ways my poems are very conventional, and it's no big deal for me to write a poem in either free verse or strict form; modern poets can, and do, do both.

When Keats says: 'Axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses', what he means is that we don't necessarily believe what a poem is saying if it comes out and tells us in an absolutely head-on, in-your-face way; we only believe it to be true if we feel it to be true.