John Keats | 'Give me books, fruit, French wine and fine weather and a little ...

‘At times of crisis or distress, it’s poems that people turn to. (Poetry) still has a power to speak to people’s feelings, maybe in a way that fiction, because it works in a longer way, can’t. There’s a little bit of your brain that mourns and grieves that you’re not writing poetry, but actually as long as I’m writing something, I’m happy.’