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.

My wife used to tell me one of my best qualities was that my feet don't smell, but I remember my brother's did when we were kids.

I write the poems first, with only a few exceptions for odd reasons, where I'm given the illustration first.

I'm mostly influenced by life, what's around me, and my own childhood.

Writing gives me the opportunity to explore ideas, play with language, solve problems, use my imagination, and draw on my own childhood.

I've been influenced by poets as diverse as Dylan Thomas, Lewis Carroll, and Edgar Allan Poe.

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.