From the beginning. I was a poem-writing child. I wrote little novels in my composition book when I was eight, nine years old.

Keep growing. Stay awake. Beware of gurus. Keep a low overhead.

People want poetry and need it - we need what's not honored by the corporate mentality that has taken over. It gives people a language for responding to the violence, the shallowness, the near-nothings, the toys we're all supposed to want. It's a way for people to be able to connect with themselves.

I think translation is an impossible job, and I admire the people who do it in a way that brings poetry to us that we wouldn't have access to.

I love stories, but writing fiction is another craft and I don't feel as if I have it.

I love that people want to know about poetry. It's one of the ways of keeping alive.

My books have come many years apart and each one seems to reflect a period of experience. Ending the book is like putting a period on a certain movement. Interior and external - both.