Poetry uses language to create a music borne inside human experiences and emotions.

Often when I write poetry I don't quite know what I'm saying myself. I mean, I can't restate the poem. The meaning of the poem is the poem.

I do love writing prose interspersed with the poetry of other people. Their rhythms break into my prose and create a connection.

To my mind, most prose poems are more prose than poetry. They don't possess most of the qualities of a poem.

I like poetry because poetry - even in free verse - is formal, and it has to be very concise and packed and rich, and I like the feeling of having to do that, having to make the language tight and still free, as if the deepest freedom is created by the restrictions.

In poetry I can let the language go, allow an image that seems out of place to enter and see what happens, always listening to the music that's being created, just like the world around us, never predictable, always shifting and intertwining, reflecting and echoing itself.

I think the language of science is highly lyrical and evocative and an important part of our lives in many ways.