Why I Write

Recently, I've been a frequent visitor to the U.K. and Ireland, and I do read a great deal of the poetry that has been written and is being written here. My publisher is based in Manchester, so I feel directly involved in this poetry scene although my observations are those of an outsider. As an Indian who studied and lived in the U.S. for some time, now lives in Germany, and is today writing these lines from Spain, I wonder whether the role of poetry today is really very different in all of the above mentioned countries.