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 switch between fixed forms and free verse often, and enjoy being a poet who can "swing both ways," so to speak.

I like when a poem ends on its "receipts," meaning it gives me something tactile or tangible to dwell on as I exit the reading experience. So I strive to end my own poems that way as well.

I write a lot, and then forget what I've written, and then come back to it and say, "Not bad, I should do something with this!"

Young poets worry that their experiences - whether urban or rural, immigrant or native, small town, suburb, or big city - aren't worthy of the written word. But for me the urge toward poetry, that seductive feeling of being swept away by words, was enough for me to overcome that fear that my experiences weren't worthy of poetry itself.

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