I was trained as an actress. But I wasn't a very convincing actress, so I started doing punk poetry and then fell into doing stand-up.

I've always had a love for poetry and when I got signed to a record label I thought, 'How odd that I'm doing a record before a book of poetry,'

I think when kids just see well-crafted poetry, it's just obtuse to them. It's hard to relate to.

A public expectation, it has to be said, not of poetry as such but of political positions variously approvable by mutually disapproving groups.

Poetry has the virtue of being able to say twice as much as prose in half the time, and the drawback, if you do not give it your full attention, of seeming to say half as much in twice the time.