After I'd produced about two dozen pen and ink drawings, one evening I decided that they needed poems to accompany them. I still have no idea where that notion came from, but it took me about two hours to produce verses for these creatures.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.