My ideal reader is somebody who reads my poems out loud.

For me, poetry is a way of thinking, and like many poets, I'm driven by the idea of trying to find the impossible, perfect words: the words that will hold my subject.

I do consider myself Canadian, but I feel American, too. I've spent more than fifteen years in each of the two countries, so really I just think of myself as a dual citizen, which is what I am. Thankfully, I've never been forced to choose!

If poems very different from my own bring pleasure to a group of readers, who am I to say that the poems should have been written differently?

Memorizing the work of others definitely made me a better writer.

When you recite you're giving a performance, in the way that an actor or a singer performs, and some poets are not interested in doing that, maybe because they're writing for a readership as opposed to an audience, or because they see poetry as a very private art.

I want to reiterate that my understanding of the poem is not the poem's core, true meaning. Once a poem goes out into the world, the poet is just one more reader.