I started wanting desperately to say something, to make a point, to be heard - and I still feel that way. Free verse served me best when I embarked on poetry.

The spoken word community was significant in making me want to write accessible and urgent poems. Bob Holman, in particular, was an impressive figure.

I had no idea, when I was writing early on, that my poems would be published or read by anyone, never mind people I knew or would meet. I just wrote urgently - naïvely, I suppose, looking back.

I also could see myself as a stand-up comedian, a fashion designer (for people of all sizes), a hairdresser, an earnest and eventually burnt-out politician, or the owner of a small bistro. But I fear that, without poetry, I would have simply been going through the motions.

I always wanted to be some kind of writer - I wrote plays and songs and "books" before I realized living and breathing people still wrote poems.

The "biggest" poems I ever made are based on the psychological principal of the "Johari Window:" what the self freely shares with others; what the self hides from others; what others hide from the self; and what is unknown to the self and others.

I know writers for whom the act of writing is a necessary chore. They suffer to write great work. I am very lucky that for me writing is a delight.