Growing up in a rural household did not naturally foster a reading habit for the former poet laureate.
His father famously claimed to have read only half a book in his entire life, while his mother finished just a few novels each year.
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However, early literary sparks emerged when his grandmother gifted him "My Father’s Dragon" by Ruth Stiles Gannett at around age seven.
He recalls finding the book highly amusing and ingenious.
Early Encounters with Poetry and Fiction
At his first school, he acquired "White Eagles Over Serbia" by Lawrence Durrell.
Though his parents deemed it too violent and he never finished it, he enjoyed carrying it around to appear grown-up.
His deep connection to poetry began in secondary school when a history teacher read Wilfred Owen during lessons on the First World War.
Buying Owen's "Collected Poems" soon followed, becoming a lifelong sacred text for him.
Writing did not initially seem like a realistic path.
Yet, he began writing poems while exploring "Theme and Variations," a 1965 poetry anthology edited by RB Heath during his A-levels.
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Evolving Tastes and Rereadings
His appreciation for Alexander Pope developed over decades.
First reading "An Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot," he was initially baffled by its obscure references, but fifty years later, he considers Pope a master of technique.
For poetic autobiography, he highly values Wordsworth’s "The Prelude" and John Berryman’s "77 Dream Songs."
