I lived a life I knew I had to hide My father's edicts resolutely grim.

It's fun to see someone grow as a writer, moving from their first workshopped poems to publishing their earliest poems to having a book accepted for publication. It's great to see poets with persistence succeed.

I need sometimes to hang back in the shadows with my pen and paper, and then other times, I need to take center stage in my own creations. The trick is to know when to hang back, and when to step forward. It's a perpetual ongoing balance.

Poetry is such an ancient art, and I consider myself young within that art.

Only after my father's death could I speak my own individual truths about him. In a sense, I had to turn him into a character, a figure I could control through language.

I do bring my teaching together with my writing. I make students write in class, and do the same prompts I give them. I'm always on the lookout for teaching poems - poems that inspire me and my students to write poems in response.

I write when I can. I have no set writing practices, or times, or methods. I write when I'm not doing other things - in the odd times when I'm traveling, or in hotels, or when I get time to be alone with my thoughts.