Poets, read this. Everybody else, skip.

From the excellent Readysteadybook, some excerpts from an interview with a poet.

Interviewer (Mark Thwaite): You say that what you recall from school about poetry is a physical reaction to language. Is that still the case now?

Poet (Dennis O'Driscoll): In Emily Dickinson's much-cited touchstone for a poem, she feels "physically as if the top of my head were taken off". A.E. Housman applies a bristling skin test to poetry, another famous example of a physical criterion for the efficacy of a poem. Goosebumps and decapitation are not the whole story, though. The physical aspect is the one that's easiest to be sure about - it registers on your pulse rate, after all, and is the one that's least embarrassing to talk about. But the deepest reactions to a great poem will - pace Emily Dickinson - actually be over the top. I know I am in the grip of a true poem when I can hardly bear to read it calmly at first, so all-embracing and far-reaching is its instantaneous effect on me. I realise I am about to meet with psychic turbulence; undergo a vast excitation of mind, soul and body that will turn me outside in. This is not something I can face lightly. I need to adjust and acclimatise - cool down, in short - before I feel capable of responding adequately to the emotional, musical and verbal demands of the poem. I avert my eyes for a while, blink in dazzlement or take a short walk… Robert Frost describes the experience exactly: "The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken a mortal wound. That he will never get over it."

Interviewer: Does your poetry "descend" or do you work and work at each and every word and line?

Poet: Like a lot of people, I am completely passive in my writing of poetry. Unless I sense the rhythms, see the images and hear the words spontaneously, I am helpless. I cannot force my hand; cannot create a poem by wilfully manipulating my pen across the white expanses of the page - it simply has to be prompted. Usually, what is termed "inspiration" means that the ingredients of the poem are gathered for you and you must then concoct a suitable recipe. There are rare and wonderful moments, though, when the entire poem is served in one delicious, steaming hot course by a Muse in the guise of a discreet waitress who knows exactly which of today's "specials" will perfectly match your appetite.

Interviewer: Czeslaw Milosz called Simone Weil and Oscar Milosz "writers in whose school I obediently studied". Who, in this sense, schooled you?

Poet: Bertolt Brecht. The poet rather than the playwright. He constitutes an entire school in himself (unruly pupils included) - the headmaster laconic and lapidary; his teaching assistants ranging from scathing satirists to subtle psalmists. I have deliberately been a poor student of Bertolt Brecht's life, knowing I would be totally out of sympathy with his post-war political posturing and his hypocritical behaviour in various spheres. With Brecht, I concentrate my time and attention on what is the very best thing about him as a writer: his incontrovertible greatness as a wry, wise, humane poet and consummate craftsman.

Interviewer: What does receiving the American Academy of Arts & Letters E. M. Forster Award mean to you?

Poet: The poet C.K. Williams, who judged the 2005 E.M. Forster Award with the playwright John Guare and the novelist Alison Lurie, recently remarked that "A friend of mine once said, 'The fear of failure is the common cold of the artistic personality.' Once you win a prize, it puts a dent in that - at least for a few hours!" It was of course an enormous encouragement and surprise to find three distinguished American writers, with whom I had no previous communication of any kind, air mailing me news of an award on behalf of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In fact, the very existence of the Forster Award was news to me - I had no idea what it was or that I was eligible, let alone that I was being seriously considered.

Interviewer: How do you write? Longhand, straight onto the computer?

Poet: I put all my poetry on the long finger and the long land: the long finger because I try to let the idea for a poem marinate as long as possible in the juices of the subconscious between the initial impulse and the initial writing; the long hand, because I cling superstitiously to the commonplace notion that there is some stimulative and creative connection between the movement of the hand and the flow of the imagination. Where the computer is very useful is in displaying the architecture of the poem - allowing you to play with alternative forms and test various line-lengths far less laboriously than in the rattling good old days of the Smith Corona with its end-of-line ringtone. My computer superstitions do not extend to critical articles - or to website questionnaires for that matter. I am typing as I speak …

Interviewer: What is your favourite book/who is your favourite writer?

Poet: My favourite book - no doubt about it - is The New Oxford Book of Sixteenth Century Verse, edited by Emrys Jones. Luckily, I bought the hardback when it first appeared in 1991 - otherwise it would have disintegrated from use by now. This is the grounding in poetry I missed as a result of having studied Law rather than English at university. To read Elizabethan poets is like being present at poetry's Big Bang. Was there ever a period when language was more inventive, more improvised, more alive? And I love the zing and zest with which these poets wrestled with poetry in other languages, permanently enriching and influencing English literature in the process.

Interviewer: Do you have any tips for the aspiring writer!?

Poet: The obvious: remember there is no one "correct" way of becoming a writer. As somebody who has never in my life been inside a poetry workshop or creative writing class, either as student or tutor, I resist the idea that all aspiring writers need to somehow "qualify" as artists - as if, to follow the hierarchical logic of the creative writing institutions, those with a doctorate in writing could expect ipso facto to write better (or command higher royalties!) than those with a mere master's degree or none at all. The very quirks and eccentricities which a workshop will probably discourage may in fact be the aspiring writer's most valuable capital in the longer term. Would-be literary Samsons should be wary of enrolling in a hairdressing school.

Interviewer: Anything else you'd like to say?

Poet: I have too many bad memories of overly-long poetry readings to linger any longer at this podium. Thanks for your company. Drinks, anyone?

(Dennis O'Driscoll was born in Thurles, Co Tipperary in 1954, his seven books of poetry include Weather Permitting (Anvil Press, 1999), which was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the Irish Times Poetry Prize, Exemplary Damages (Anvil Press, 2002) and New & Selected Poems (Anvil Press, 2004), a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. A selection of his essays and reviews, Troubled Thoughts, Majestic Dreams (Gallery Press), was published in 2001. Among his awards are a Lannan Literary Award in 1999 and the 2005 E.M. Forster Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has worked as a civil servant since the age of 16.)