Poetry is a tree with very deep roots and while there may be excitement about this or that new little branch, you're not going to make anything original by just doing whatever's being rewarded at the moment.

Teaching has given me a community that cares about poetry, and I'm grateful for that.

I'm much more capable of cutting back than of expanding. I've gotten very surgical about poems.

Whether the poet is living or dead, they're part of our imaginative community.

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

There's always some reason not to be writing and I regret the times I give in to that, because then writing feels strange - I feel like I have to reinvent the wheel. There are poets who don't have to do that.

I worked in an art gallery for a few years, doing administrative assistance stuff, and it exposed me to what the whole world of art dealers and the art market was about.