John Cooper Clarke

I was pushing for a career in poetry and of course the received wisdom was that you would never make a living at it.

I went to what can only be described as a slum school in Salford - rough and full of trainee punks - but I was very lucky in that I had one inspiring teacher, John Malone, who gave the whole class an interest in romantic poetry.

I had a million jobs before I managed to make a living out of poetry.

If you want to know why the coast is such an inspirational place, ask Herman Melville, Jack London, Nordhoff and Hall, Robert Louis Stevenson or Joseph Conrad. It's a glimpse of eternity. It invites rumination, the relentless whisper of the tide against the shore.

Happiness is the target one only has to aim at in order to miss.