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

How would you prepare to die on a perfect April evening?

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.

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.

You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus, in the news, or just what's in your heart.

I'll be left writing picture books and fairy tales