WHEN I THINK about poetry, about my need to read it and reflect on it – and even express the odd poem here and there as if a more direct voice had been switched on inside of me – I recall that it arrived in my life when I was a boy.

The sounds of popular culture were never just a beat to me. They became a form of melodic literature as vital as the classics in which I was schooled and ‘learnt’ to love so profoundly.