Having a child takes you back to all those parts of your own childhood that you had hidden away.

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

I still read Donne, particularly his love poems

Poets deal in writing about feelings and trying to find the language and images for intense feelings.

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.

Auden said poetry makes nothing happen. But I wonder if the opposite could be true. It could make something happen.

I have piles of poetry books in the bathroom, on the stairs, everywhere. The only way to write poetry is to read it.