It's always good when women win things in fiction because it tends to be more male-dominated, unlike poetry, which is more equal

I still read Donne, particularly his love poems

When you have a child, your previous life seems like someone else's. It's like living in a house and suddenly finding a room you didn't know was there, full of treasure and light.

I write quite a lot of sonnets, and I think of them almost as prayers: short and memorable, something you can recite.

She stood upon a continent of ice, which sparkled between sea and sky, endless and dazzling, as though the world kept all its treasure there; a scale which balanced poetry and prayer.

Where I lived - winter and hard earth.I sat in my cold stone roomchoosing tough words, granite, flint,to break the ice. My broken heart -I tried that, but it skimmed,flat, over the frozen lake.She came from a long, long way,but I saw her at last, walking,my daughter, my girl, across the fields,In bare feet, bringing all spring's flowersto her mother's house. I swearthe air softened and warmed as she moved,the blue sky smiling, none too soon,with the small shy mouth of a new moon.

For me, poetry is the music of being human. And also a time machine by which we can travel to who we are and to who we will become.