How did you first get interested in poetry?
In Synge Street School, the initial strong influences were English poetry– Shakespeare, Blake, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, and Coleridge; and Irish poetry in English– Mangan, Davis, Ferguson and, of course, Yeats, though Joyce influenced me more.

He wasn’t a great poet, but he was the first writer from his background with real genius, and he revolutionised prose. Later, I also admired Beckett. Other influences included poetry in Irish by such as Raftery, Eoghan Rua O Súilleabháin; and, in Latin, Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphosis. T.S. Eliot’s poetry was a later influence.

I went to study English at UCD in 1962, and switched from English to History and Political Science for my major, ending up with an MA in Modern History. The English course at that time was so old-fashioned: it stopped at the beginning of the 20th century. There was no Joyce, no Beckett, just a concentration on Yeats, and very little American poetry– though Denis Donoghue did introduce some modern American literary criticism and a few of Frost’s poems.

At UCD, I encountered people who later became well-known writers, such as Michael Hartnett and Paul Durcan. John Jordan was my favourite lecturer in English– many who attended his English Literature classes later became well-known writers: among them, Durcan, Hartnett, James Liddy, Macdara Woods, Brian Lynch, and Michael Smith. Poetry was being written by people I knew.

Patrick Kavanagh was probably the single biggest influence on me after school and university. He influenced me at a young age and remains a powerful influence. I met Kavanagh on a few occasions, some not entirely happy and successful encounters. I spoke to Kavanagh about AE (George Russell) who was one of the first to publish him, as I was researching AE and the co-operative movement for an MA at the time. He told me that on his first visit to Dublin, he went to AE’s house in Rathgar, and AE gave him a present of half a dozen books. Jordan was one of Kavanagh’s best friends in Dublin, and he didn’t have many.

Anthony Cronin, in a new book on Michael Hartnett edited by his son, Niall Hartnett, shared some memories of writers who socialised in O’Dwyers and MacDaid’s in the early 60s. In the winter of 62-63, Cronin had just come back from teaching in a US university. He discussed with Jordan, Hartnett, Liddy, myself and others, the merits of the Beats– Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Ferlinghetti. At that time Ginsberg’s HOWL could only be got in London. Cronin was not very favourable about the Beats, though he has since modified his view. Jordan and Liddy were enthusiastic; Hartnett didn’t consider them a direct influence on himself. Years later, I had the pleasure of showing Ginsberg around Dublin on his visit in 1993. He loved Blake and was enthralled by Yeats.

When did you publish your first poems?
My first poems were published in a UCD magazine called ‘The Student’, in 63-64. I nearly made it into James Liddy’s Arena, as Michael Hartnett, co-editor, had accepted my poems. But Liddy vetoed the acceptance because I used a pseudonym. That set back my writing for a while.

John Jordan was editing ‘Poetry Ireland’ magazine, but I hadn’t the confidence to submit anything to him after the episode with Liddy. Jordan, who later became a good friend of mine, was the first major critic to acknowledge me as a poet, much later, about 1981, when he accepted some poems for the new ‘Poetry Ireland Review’. It was he who convinced me that I could write poetry.

I began working in the ‘Irish Press’ in 1973, and I tended to regard myself as a news journalist and sub-editor– John Banville was Chief Sub-Editor, and I was an Assistant Chief Sub on his Desk. He was an extraordinarily disciplined person, working eight hours in a stressful job and writing novels in the morning before going to work in the evening. I tended to ‘socialise’ a lot in those years with other journalists and bohemian literary friends. So I didn’t publish as early as my compatriots.

I had had some poems published in the 70s in ‘Broadsheet’, edited by Hayden Murphy, but it was only when John Jordan called me a poet and published my work, and then in 1984, your press, Beaver Row, published my book, ‘Cities of Mirrors’, that I began to think of myself as someone who wrote poems.

In 1993, my second collection, ‘Pieces of Time’, was accepted and published almost immediately by Denis Greig of Lapwing Press in Belfast. As sometimes happens, Lagan Press of Belfast then got interested and in 1995, published my third collection, ‘Elegies and Epiphanies’. The elegies were often for literary or journalist friends who had passed away– including Jordan and Hartnett. I had been reviewing books for the Book Pages in ‘The Irish Press’, edited by David Marcus, so I was better known as a literary journalist than a poet.

At the beginning of the 1980s, John F Deane approached Jordan to edit a re-founded poetry magazine to be called ‘Poetry Ireland Review’, which still exists. Jordan, one of our most eminent literary critics, then asked me to help him edit a selection of his literary criticism. I wasn’t able to do it at that time because of work commitments.

When John Jordan died in 1988, his brother James asked me to be his literary executor. I took this on as a labour of love. So in 1991, Deane’s Daedalus Press published Jordan’s ‘Collected Poems’, which I edited, and Poolbeg Press published his collected stories. In 2004, I edited his selected prose, entitled ‘Crystal Clear’, with Lilliput Press. Pat Boran’s Dedalus Press published the ‘Selected Poems’ last year.

I am putting another volume together now around themes that interest me at present– political poems commenting on the state of the world and how it affects me. The working title is ‘Atomic Shadows’. It includes anti-war poems, relating to events in wars from World War II to present conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the bombing of cities like Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, London, and more recent atrocities from Northern Ireland to Iraq.

As I get older, I begin to agree with Thomas Kinsella’s view that man has a propensity for violence and war, which seems intrinsic to his nature, as stated in his recent poem, ‘Argument’ .

Do you have any advice for young poets starting out?
I think it is so much easier for young poets to get published now that maybe some publish too early. Take your time, and publish in magazines a while before getting together a collection. Re-examine early verse and maybe rewrite before launching a volume. With the advent of poetry slams, some try to produce ‘instant’ poetry. This might sound well, but might not wear too well on the page.

I discovered what Kavanagh meant when he said ‘I dabbled in verse, and it became my life.’