It feels like a bit of an indulgence to be writing poems. Like a mad hobby. But I do it because it's my favourite thing to do, since I was about 15. Once I get going it feels great. Every so often, there's a day when I should be doing practical things - making phone calls and writing letters - and I spend the entire day working on a poem instead. There's a prodigal side of me that just doesn't care.
Every day is a writing day for me, combined randomly with everything else I do. It's a sort of mixed media, four-wheel drift existence. I get up in the morning, have my breakfast and take a bath. By 10 a.m. I'm in my cosy study, ready for work. I put on a record, usually country music in the morning. I like Hank Williams, Iris de Ment and Steve Earle. The louder the better. In the afternoons I switch to Britpop or Indie Rock. I like Supergrass and Teenage Fan Club at the moment. Or jazz: Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk or Count Basie. I play music all the time so I don't have to think too much. Writing can be tedious and ghastly, and if you have music on it tricks you into thinking you're having a good time. It also allows me to alternate my thoughts - I find if I focus too much on what I'm writing I kill it.
I break for lunch at about 12.30 p.m. when I whisk up something delicious to eat from Sainsbury's or Marks and Spencer. If my wife is here I cook for her too. At the moment she is usually in France, where she inherited a house from her grandfather. She's converting the outhouses into artists' residences. We visit each other but we live apart two thirds of the time.
At 1.45 p.m. I lie on the sofa and watch Neighbours. I've been watching it for 15 years. I like the Australian accents and they have such pretty girls. Before Neighbours started, I used to watch The Sullivans, which was also an Australian soap, but was set in the 1940s. My mother is from Australia, so watching Australian soaps gives me a vicarious nostalgia.
In the afternoon I often toddle down to Essex Road to do some shopping. I live in Islington in London and Essex Road has kept its old Islington atmosphere since the 1960s. I like going into the second-hand record shops. Or I might go for a walk along the Regent's Canal. The day usually involves lots of rests, slumping in armchairs and teadrinking. My study is packed with books of poetry. Those poets who are special to me include Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop. Also Michael Hoffmann and Bernard O'Donoghue, both of whom were on the T.S. Eliot prize shortlist with me.
In the evening I watch TV: EastEnders, any film that's going, and Top of the Pops. I very often get a first line in my head while I'm watching TV, and I have a book full of these first lines. When I have nothing else to do I take this book out to see if I can do anything with them. I go out with my daughter some evenings. She's 33 and editor of GQ magazine. We always have fun together. Or I go to book launches, to see the old poets hanging out.
About every two months I meet a friend, an academic in London University, who helps me work on my poems. He weighs my work for feeling. I trust his judgment, although I don't always act on it. He thinks I should have been more abstemious in Billy's Rain, and I agree with him now, but of course it's too late. Luckily when you publish a lot of love poems together the bad ones go unnoticed and the good ones keep you going. Actually I haven't finished with this love theme. I'm still writing about it. My wife doesn't care too much about me having written all these poems about my affair with a younger woman - it happened five years ago and was never really very dramatic.
Every second weekend I work flat out, writing my fortnightly column for the TLS. I like doing it - it keeps me in the real world - but I'm not sure if I should be writing prose, my poetry is already so prosey.
At the end of the day I like to leave something unfinished, so there's something I can get back to the next morning.
(In conversation with Katie Donovan)
Hugo Williams's most recent collection of poetry, Billy's Rain (Faber & Faber), won the T.S. Eliot Prize last month