I don't know whether a poem has be there to help to develop something. I think it's there for itself, for what the reader finds in it.

I started to send my work to journals when I was 26, which was just a question of when I got the courage up. They were mostly journals I had been reading for the previous six or seven years.

I'm addicted to email, but other than that, there are practical things - being able to buy a book on the internet that you can't find in your local bookshop. This could be a lifeline if you live further from the sources.

Poetry dovetails contradictions.

Paris is a wonderful city. I can't say I belong to an especially anglophone community.

Everyone thinks they're going to write one book of poems or one novel.

I've been an inveterate reader of literary magazines since I was a teenager. There are always discoveries. You're sitting in your easy chair, reading; you realize you've read a story or a group of poems four times, and you know, Yes, I want to go farther with this writer.