It's true, there aren't many explicit references to Canada in my book. And not many explicit references to the U.S., either. I try to fill my poems with enough real, observed detail that the poems create a believable world - but I don't write poems for the sake of telling my own story. My life is not important or interesting enough to warrant that kind of documentary. Instead I try to use my experience as a way of understanding situations that are common to many people. I want readers to project their own lives onto my poems.

Maybe because I can't even put together an IKEA desk, I've never been tempted to think of my own poems as built objects - but I do sometimes imagine them as mathematical constructs.

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.

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

I don't think I'd ever get any better as a poet if I didn't push myself, very deliberately, to grow. My best poems surprise me, as they should, but I fight them at every turn, possibly just because I'm stubborn.

Poetry isn't an efficient tool for preserving experience, any more than it's an efficient mode of communication, but who says that it should be efficient?

It is hard to compare cultures without overgeneralizing, but I think a lot of American poetry has an assertiveness - an upbeat quality - that's less typical of Canadian poetry. Of course there are poets in both countries to whom that generalization does not apply. Speaking broadly, I'd describe Canadians as being a bit more reserved than Americans. Not less opinionated - just less direct.