I accept challenges, I have always done that in writing.

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

The sound of a word is at least as important as the meaning.

She comes by night, in fearsome flight, in garments black as pitch, the queen of doom upon her broom, the wild and wicked witch.

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

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.

I invented animals and birds - I had about two dozen. After working on them for six months, I sat down and just for fun wrote two dozen poems to accompany the drawings. It was for no one to every see, but a friend sent me in to an editor.