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

I write to be recorder, observer, participant, and sometimes, even judge. I want to engage the world as I see it with my whole self - all of those different aspects of it.

I'm educating myself more about world poetry. I know a lot about contemporary American poetry, so I felt I needed to learn more about figures like Borges, Akhmatova, Neruda, etc. I felt I needed a bigger lens to see poetry through. It really helps to see poetry as a world language, and not just something American.

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.

I find it hard to write poems in reaction to world/national events unless there's a way in that's so evident to me that I can't deny the urge to write about such events. It takes me a while to gather the evidence, you know?

Each poem seems to demand its own formal approach. In both drafting and revision, I'll play around with line lengths and stanza formations, eventually letting the poem settle into what I think is its own best form.

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!"