How long have you been writing poetry?

I began writing poetry in 1976. I was a university lecturer then, living in Copenhagen. One night I lay down to sleep and dreamed a poem which I wrote down. When I went back to sleep, I dreamed another, and wrote that down too. Next day when I got up, I knew that what I wanted to do was write, and a few years later I gave up academic life and returned to Wales. I can't remember what those poems were about now, and I still don't know why I had those dreams.

Do you take inspiration from your local everday life?

I think you can and should be inspired by almost anything. You never know where a poem is coming from or what little piece of experience might lead to a metaphor or simile. So yes, everyday local life is a source of poems. Recently I have been going a lot to Ynys Las, birdwatching, and have become fascinated by the drowned forest that appears now and then in the sands at Ynys Las and Borth, and by the legend of Cantre'r Gwaelod. This has led to a number of poems lately.

How do you begin a new collection - do you write to a theme or do themes emerge?

For me, usually, themes emerge. Often I will stumble on a new form, and the new form will open up a theme or themes, perhaps of a kind I would not have imagined otherwise; as if the new form is a door to new kinds of poetic possibility.

The only time I deliberately set out to write to a theme is when I wrote a long poem-story called Ice, which is set in an indeterminate future when the northern hemisphere has entered a new ice age because the Gulf Stream had been stopped in its tracks by a flood of freshwater as a result of the melting of the polar ice cap (something which has happened several times in the geological record).

I knew in advance that this would have a hundred sections, and that it would have a coherent story, though I wasn't sure how it would end until I got there. It is, I suppose, a kind of environmental warning about what we are doing to the Earth today.

What are the poems in your new collection, 'Trouble in Heaven', about?

They cover several themes which have interested if not obsessed me for some time: the beauty and horror of the natural world (the one cannot be separated from the other, it seems to me), and related to this, the nature of humanity and what we are doing to the world in our thoughtless and frequently ruthless way.

Also, the question of religion. I was brought up a Christian, but reluctantly so, and much of what I write could be seen as a kind of dialogue with Christianity; with the idea of a God in which I find it impossible to believe.

As a previous editor of 'Planet: the Welsh Internationalist' how do you think Welsh poetry is doing in the international context today?

Welsh poetry, in both languages, has a higher international profile than at any time in its history. In the past twenty years, poets have increasingly bypassed London with its anglo-centricity and made direct contacts with poets and cultural organisations abroad.

This seems to me an exciting and healthy situation. It has been helped by the existence of the Assembly, and by organisations like Welsh Literature Abroad which are dedicated to furthering awareness of Welsh writing through translation and through readings overseas. Personally, I have read far more often in North America and Europe than in England, for example.

What advice would you offer local budding poets?

Writing of any kind is a lonely business, but it is also a very exciting process of discovery. I think a budding poet needs to read as widely as possible among his or her contemporaries; but also in historic depth. If you don't know the current scene, and if you don't know the tradition of poetry in your own language, how can you measure the worth of your own writing? So read the great poets all the time.

But also you need someone - it doesn't need to be more than one person; someone whose judgement you can trust, who will tell you the truth, as he or she sees it, about the latest batch of your poems. Truth can hurt; nobody likes to see their darlings strangled at birth; but it is the only way to learn. And remember that every failed poem is nonetheless a stepping stone on the path to mastering the craft, so that nothing is ever completely wasted.

What plans do you have for the future?

I've recently completed a memoir of my father who was a shopkeeper in Abergavenny - all my family were shopkeepers. It is a kind of window on what is essentially a vanished world of the small town Welsh shopkeeping class, called "Tales of the Shopocracy" which will eventually be published by Gomer. I'm also beginning work on a new collection of lyric poems, but it is too early to discern a pattern in them yet.

Q&A with John Barnie