Not to speak the language makes you innocent again, invisible…

The poems in Mean Time are about the different ways in which time brings about change or loss. In the collection, I mean to write about time. The effects of time can be mean. Mean can mean average. The events in the poems can happen to the average man or woman. The dwindling of childhood. Ageing. The distance of history. The tricks of memory and the renewal of language. The end of love. Divorce. New love. Luck. And so on. In the last book… I had begun to write more personal, autobiographical poems; and this switch from the dramatic-monologue dominated stance of earlier collections is intensified in Mean Time. I found it interesting that the techniques stumbled across and refined in writing ‘Other Voices’ helped me to pitch my own voice - for we all have several - particularly when finding language for the painful areas dealt with in the poems.

I think, now, I retain some of the motifs of ail that and none of the feelings; faith, guilt, whatever. I do envy people who have a religious faith -1 can recall the comfort, the sense of a safety net. I still enjoy the sensuality of aspects of the Catholic religion and a lot of the imagery.