I thought that perhaps if the sky was truly free of clouds and any other distractions (birds, kites, skywriting), we could see if there was something else out there. I wasn't really raised in any religion (in England I attended an Anglican school and went to a Methodist church, but I left that all behind at the age of eight when we moved to the U.S.), but like most people, I sometimes wonder if there's anything or anyone out there.

I also like poems that are haunted by a structure or a narrative, or poems that frisk flirtatiously at the boundary of sense.

I am pretty interested in hybrid forms. I love graphic novels and I think there should be more graphic poems in the world.

Poetic success is when you write a poem that makes you excited and bewildered and aglow.

I'm pretty lenient with myself about time - if I feel like taking photographs of small things inside ice cubes or making animal collages, I just do it. When I want to write, I write. It's all part of the same thing for me.

Writing a poem is always a process of subtracting: you start with all of language available to you, and you choose a smaller field.

Teaching is a great way to keep learning.