When did you first start writing poetry?

The hardest question. I'd been writing songs in my teens and then Gillian Clarke came into a sixth form lesson. I bought Gillian's first collection, "The Sundial", and it helped me connect the Romantic poets I'd been reading with the age I was living in. The idea of writing in white space, rather than on the air, started to take over. So, 1978, or thereabouts.

You were born in Aberystwyth and left in your teens, what kind of memories do you have of the area?

My Aber life was split into two - the quiet years on the Waun and then, from the age of eleven, the very different experience of living down in the town, in Cliff Terrace. I lived on the Waun before it sprawled, when it was still more of a rural village.

Everyone knew everyone. There was Griffiths y Glo, Mair Fach, Mr Grundy ... I spent most of my childhood kicking a football. All the local boys would meet on the playing fields at Dinas School and play into the darkness. I rate playing in Waunfawr Wanderers' first ever match pretty high on my list of... er... achievements. I think we lost 7-1 to Llanon. I went to school in Comins Coch.

"Comins Coch"

Coming in from the yard, we unlearnt
the natural dance of play, stiffened
into rows, one for each class, hands
reaching to touch the shoulder in front,

to establish neat spaces. Miss Jones,
our referee, after the shuffled pack
took order, would double-check
her game of patience on the linear stones.

She once broke the cane on Emyr Brees,
set him homework to cut another
from his father's hedge. Quiet Heather's
tears ran down her knees.

On the canteen wall, Sir Ifan ap
Owen M. Edwards, above the sprouts
and the gooseberries, turned away, motes
of the alphabet caught in his suntrap.

Time spelt us right. We got xylophones,
slide-rules, projector screens,
trips to Chester Zoo and St Fagans,
a topic on Ghana's coffee beans.

Miss Jones started to smile. The smell
of swede from the kitchen grew tame.
I pulled on the ring of the steel frame
so the field hung at an angle

in the huge window all afternoon,
waiting for the bell. We discussed,
in English: Carlo, George Best
and the next Apollo. The blackboard spun.

With her back to us, that last Friday,
with her bucket, her housecoat over her dress,
she might have been polishing glass,
not square, chalk-marked infinities.

The town was a completely different kettle of mackerel to the Waun. I changed teams, to the Ravens, and got up to the usual mischief - shooting, fishing, snorkling, gambling ... enough! Let's just say Aber was a wonderful playground.

More acute memories are in two of my books, "The Milk Thief" and "Ingrid's Husband". And there are a couple of anecdotes in Niall Griffiths' excellent "Real Aber."

Do localities play much of a role in your work?

Yes. Aberystwyth; New Quay, where I'd visit my Auntie Geta; two Breconshire villages and now Newport. I've written long poems on Aber and Newport but here's a short, lyric poem from "The Milk Thief." It's set on the prom.

I think they got rid of the "Replica of a Sunshine Home for Blind Babies" in the 1980's. It was a doll's house affair, inside a glass case, situated between the pier and the paddling pool. You could see figurines of blind orphans inside it. My parents used to lift me up to it.

"Replica of a Sunshine Home for
Blind Babies, Aberystwyth"

Did no one take a brick to this glass case?
A ball and chain?
Now I'm old enough to press my face
to the brittle pane

without their ghostly hugs around my gaze
it comes home -
how time's a shell of the snail it was,
a smaller room.

What miniature, sunken eyes remain look out
from a pantheon
that keeps this town's unstable light,
as I look in,

trying to read the Braille of the years between,
with no clear sign
but, conjured back and fore by the sun,
their faces in mine.

How does your other role, as a songwriter, affect your poetry?

I gave up songwriting for ten years. The song lyric and the poem felt completely alien to each other, the former diluting the latter. It was discovering the Irish poet, Patrick Kavanagh, whose poems sing in your head as you read them, which made me revise this view and go back to writing the occasional song.

I'll do song-versions of poems and drop them into poetry readings, to give the audience a break from the spoken voice. But I'm a poet who writes songs, not the converse of this. The songs mean little to me.

You have read your work at festivals, is poetry something you think should be heard as well as read?

Absolutely.

What sort of challenges do poets in Wales today face?

The same as poets anywhere in the world, I imagine, in terms of developing their art and trying to create enough space in their lives for it. I find this a difficult question.

One challenge, for those who write in English, lies in deciding whether or not to publish your work with a Welsh publisher, as I have so far done, or to ensure you reach a wider audience by electing for an English publisher.

How would you advise budding poets in Mid Wales?

Don't let too many people into your lives. You'll stop hearing the silences where the poems are hiding. Keep reading and read widely, the dead and the living, the near and the far, the original and the translated. That way you'll find the voices that speak to your voice.

If you write in English, send your poems to journals over the border, as well as to Planet, New Welsh Review and Poetry Wales. New writers are well-served in Wales. Join Academi. Enrol for a course at Ty Newydd, our national writers' centre where there are courses for those who write in either of our languages. It'll move your work forward.

What are your plans for the future?

To write the next poem, to keep "imagining Love into words" (to paraphrase the great W.S.Graham).

Q&A with Paul Henry