In my own writing, I've mostly abandoned end-rhyme, but wordplay is still a huge part of my process. I've written a series of mermaid poems in the last few years. The first one was called "The Straightforward Mermaid" which arose from my delight in that word combination. After that, I decided that future mermaid poems would have to be words ending in "d" or "t," which led to "The Deadbeat Mermaid," "The Morbid Mermaid" and so forth . . .

Poems can't help but be personal. Mine are certainly an accurate blueprint of the things I think about, if not a record of my daily life.

A lot of people are writing poems and don't realize it. They have this limited idea of how the poem should sound or what subjects it should address.

Some of my favorite poems are "confessional" poems written in the voices of aliens ("Southbound on the Freeway" by May Swenson" and "Report from the Surface" by Anthony McCann), sheep ("Snow Line" by John Berryman) or a yak ("The Only Yak in Batesville, Virginia" by Oni Buchanan).

I suppose it's useful in designating writing that tends to come from personal experience, work that delineates an "I," but it's a loose lasso, one which may rope certain poems by one poet and not others.

I would love to collaborate on a graphic novel with an artist - I'm terrible at drawing but I really love that genre.

I think poetry involves heightened noticing or imagining as well as creating a certain made shape. On the other hand, that shape can be made just by pointing at something and saying, "That's a poem".