Tell me about the little-known book of Welsh Verse.

Welsh Verse goes back to the sixth century, so it’s examples of some of the earliest British poetry. If no one mentions it, no one will bother to discover it and it’s completely wonderful. Tony Conran, who translated it, is a great poet himself. He’s an academic, but they’re not academic translations and they’re magical. There are two lovely poems in the anthology I want to pick out. The first is the beautiful seventh-century poem called ‘Dinogad’s Petticoat’, which is a little lullaby to a child. It’s a poem from a Welsh manuscript – and don’t forget nearly all Welsh manuscripts were destroyed by Oliver Cromwell, so it’s remarkable it survived. Anybody would love it; it’s just gorgeous.

I expect not many people know much seventh-century poetry.

Yes, you can’t imagine it, can you? The anthology has lots of other jewels all the way through it, of course. The second one I’ve chosen is called ‘The Shirt of a Lad’ and it’s a love poem. The woman is (assuming it’s a woman) washing the lad’s shirt in a river. Someone asks her to sell it and she says she won’t sell it for a whole mountain of sheep and she gives a list of things she wouldn’t sell the shirt for. The shirt represents her fidelity and it’s just beautiful. The other thing is, the introduction to the book is among the best and most lively and readable introductions to early Welsh verse and it’s beautiful to read. Of course, you wouldn’t expect me not to choose something Welsh. I have two Penguin copies, and Simon Armitage is trying to get one of them from me. I just can’t go anywhere without it.

Why have you chosen Carol Ann Duffy’s Answering Back?

What I love about this book is that Carol Ann Duffy asked a whole load of poets to answer another poet back: to choose a poem by someone long dead, and write a response to that poem. I think that idea will encourage people to read poems. It’s a lovely anthology – although all those Picador anthologies edited by Carol Ann are lovely – but Answering Back is one of my favourites. Wonderful poems excite me and poetry speaks in the world we inhabit. Edward Thomas’s poem, ‘Tall Nettles’, spoke to me every time I passed the nettle patch in our garden, reminding me that I should cut them down, yet somehow saying, ‘Don’t do it’. When the caterpillars appeared all over the nettles, hundreds of them, and became peacock butterflies, I knew they were saved by poetry. ‘And I want to say to the dead, look what a poem sings to life: the bite of nettles, caterpillars, wings.’

Carol Ann and I both had to write a poem for the Today programme on Radio Four. Carol Ann said: ‘I’ll go to sleep and with any luck I’ll dream it,’ and she did. She’s right to say that, so don’t struggle with exhaustion. People who can write usually say wonderful things about writing and friends talking about poetry are worth listening to.

It’s so interesting to see the perspective of a poet on another poet.

Yes, and it’s more than just a collection of lovely poems for popular consumption. It does more than that. They are new poems that have been commissioned and referring to old poems is a lovely idea.

Tell me about the complete works of R S Thomas.

When I walk around my garden or in the fields, I always carry a copy of R S Thomas, or if I am going off in my car to teach a poetry course, I will, without fail, pack R S Thomas in my luggage. I would pack others as well, like Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes. Of the late 20th-century poets who have died, I think R S Thomas is fantastic. He’s so amazing even though he actually uses some very common language: ‘He’s died you know.’ It’s just what a person might say. There’s a wonderful poem called ‘Zero’, and in ‘Zero’ he says, ‘What time is it? Is it the hour…?’ It’s a fantastic short poem that brings in the whole mythology of Europe, and he brings it to a crisp punch at the end. I love his language. In fact, I knew him and liked him a lot. Yes, he was grumpy, but he was never grumpy with me because I was a woman and he was always nice to women: he liked women and young people. His poems mean a great deal to me and I learned to be a writer from poets like R S Thomas. He said, ‘Get up early and read something substantial.’ (You can just imagine it’s 4am and he’s probably reading Nietzsche.) ‘Then get a piece of paper and see what words will do.’ And I think I’ve always done that – not the early morning bit, but the ‘read something and see what words will do’. I think that’s really good advice and when I’m tutoring courses I always tell students that.

Do you write with a specific audience in mind?

No, I must admit I don’t, I’ve never done that. I used to leave my poems around and my son Dylan used to ask questions about things, and I thought if my 15-year-old son can understand enough to ask a question, then I’m probably doing all right.