No sir. I'm rather dismayed how many days I have to work on my willpower very strongly in order to get out of bed before 8 o'clock.…I write letters, I write manuscripts, in addition to the book that is in press I have two manuscripts that are going to be published some time this or next year, and I have a whole list of manuscripts that I would like to write.

I would so much like to have a daily writing schedule. If I had one, I'd probably start about 9.30, write for 2 hours, have lunch, write another 2, then goof off. As it is, I goof off, then panic and write in the evenings. Do not follow my example.

Apenas me despierto, a las 5:00 a. m., cuando voy a hacer deporte. Es lo primero que cojo cuando me despierto. No es la mejor práctica, pero sí desde tempranito.

When I’m working on a novel I type the initial draft first thing in the morning. Really: first thing. For preference, I have a cigarette ready-rolled and a coffee percolator loaded the night before; then I simply roll out of bed, fuel up and set to it. I believe the dreaming and imagining faculties are closely related, such that wreathed in night-time visions I find it possible to suspend disbelief in the very act of making stuff up.

Generally, my hours are during the first part of the day; hardly ever in the evening. The hours nearer noon, the zenith of the day, are good for working.

Yes, because it seems to me that poetry cannot be hermetically closed to thinking. And thinking always enters the field of contradiction. So it also has to do with the way I try to reconcile poetry versus thinking. … I think you’re right that for many American poets, poetry is almost an escape from the cruelty of thinking, from the choices you make when you think. Escaping your life—which may be tragic, but it’s not problematic. So I see it differently, as a necessity to confront these categories.

I love cities with a centre, like the Market Square in Kraków. They don’t have that in the States. A few cities were built upon Magdeburg rules, but not many. I really like New York, which has no centre (although you could count Central Park). In that respect, I’m like Venclova – I always seek the mediaeval that’s missing in America.

I loved Brodsky; I admired him. I thoroughly enjoyed talking with him, and I know he liked me, too. It was a friendship. It was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

I never know who I am.

This is not an easy question—there are many poets who are my masters. Sometimes I find a poet whose one poem speaks to me with a great force, for instance Giorgios Seferis with his “The King of Asine”, a poem that sheds light on the spiritual situation of contemporary Greek (maybe not only Greek) poetry. ... Yeats with many poems, among them the incredible “Sailing to Byzantium”; a strange poem in the sense that it’s hard to believe Yeats would find in the real Byzantium these miracles of intellect he was longing for. Montale with many poems, with his constant looking for an instant of revelation and enjoying all the impediments, all the obstacles on this road. Mandel'štam who was able to blend a tragic vision of life with a strong sense of humor and a wonderful concreteness of images.