Poetry is often the art of overhearing yourself say things you didn't know you knew. It is a learned skill to force yourself to articulate your life, your present world or your possibilities for the future.

There's a fierce practicality and empiricism which the whole imaginative, lyrical aspect of poetry comes from.

A good poem looks life straight in the face, unflinching, sincere, equal to revelation through loss or gain.

The great poems are not about experience, but are the experience itself, felt in the body.

See, even if you're stuck in life, if you can describe just exactly the way you're stuck, then you will immediately recognise that you can't go on that way anymore. So, just saying precisely, writing precisely how you're stuck, or how you're alienated, opens up a door of freedom for you.

By definition, poetry works with qualities and dynamics that mainstream society is reluctant to face head-on. It's an interesting phenomenon that by necessity, poetry is just below the radar.

I returned to poetry as a more precise way to describe the world, more precise than science.