I didn't ever consider poetry the province exclusively of English and American literature and I discovered a great amount in reading Polish poetry and other Eastern European poetry and reading Russian poetry and reading Latin American and Spanish poetry and I've always found models in those other poetries of poets who could help me on my path.

And a lot of poetry is putting yourself back into the state of wonder that you have before things when you're a child. It's not only a joyous wonder, it's sometimes a grief stricken wonder.

You can seek clarity, you can seek warmth, you can try to make something for lasting. You can pack something in salt so that it's well made and you can hope that it outlasts time. But, ultimately that's not up to you.

Now, the process of writing poetry is very messy. Not systematic, never quite the same

That is many poets don't know how to tell a story and they don't have a sense of how to put things in order to tell a story and we thought the poets could learn from fiction writers something about developing a character over time who wasn't just you and also creating a narrative structure.

There's the brilliant audacity of youth that poets strike upon in their earliest work sometimes that they never can hit upon again.

But, something has to be worked through formally as well as emotionally. Now, when those two things come together I've got something, I think, that I can be proud of.