His blood is black and boiling hot, he gurgles ghastly groans. He'll cook you in his dinner pot, your skin, your flesh, your bones.

I look for poetry in English because it's the only language I read.

I'm usually working on eight or 10 things at once.

Otherwise I don't read much adult poetry at all, because I'm not smart enough and mostly I don't get it.

Poetry seems to sink into us the way prose doesn't. I can still quote verses I learned when I was very young, but I have trouble remembering one line of a novel I just finished reading.

When I began writing, I didn't read any other children's poets... I didn't want to be influenced until I'd found my own voice. Now I read them all.

My reading is extremely eclectic. Lately I've been teaching myself computer graphics, so I'm reading a lot about that. I read books of trivia, of facts.