News at Eleven: Here, he has achieved greatness.

While our attention has been on the big fish--the novels, memoirs, television--the essays and poems have accumulated, year by year, like polyps making coral; until you realise that the most important thing isn't the fish, it's the reef, which makes all else possible.

When we talk on the phone, [Clive] James says firmly: "I think that for anyone who writes poetry, it [the poetry] is the most important thing." So--how good is the poetry?

from Prospect: As good as Heaney

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