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.

In addition to writing in received forms, I have also had fun making up forms - Möbius strips and visual poems, particularly.

In almost every book I've written, there is a reference to a movie - legendary films, actors and actresses, and forgotten made-for-TV movies. The leaps poems make are not unlike the cuts in a film. The miniature and avant-garde prose poets have perhaps the most obvious ties to film, as a prose poem in its shape is not unlike a movie screen.

My advice to my younger self would have been, "Chill. Concentrate on the poems. Everything else will work itself out."

Visual media is the dominant art form in our present day culture, whereas poetry is, at best, a proxy. Yet poetry and film are both "dream factories."

As a teenager, I loved acting, painting, photography, and making films with my friend's Super 8 camera. But I always loved writing the best. I chose writing even before I knew poetry was available to me.

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.