Instead of trying to come up and pontificate on what literature is, you need to talk with children, to teachers, and make sure they get poetry in the curriculum early.

If I begin writing a poem that means I'm intrigued in some way by whatever it's about and that if I'm not trying to find something new and pushing the envelope in the poem I can't expect my reader to be particularly excited about it either.

What's a word, a talisman, to hold against the world?

My first advice would be to read, read, read, which sounds interesting coming in a digital age, but it's so much easier to listen to a poem than it is to sit down and actually read it and to hear it in your head and that is something that every poet or aspiring poet needs to be able to do, I think to hear it in their head.

It's unfortunate that sometimes in schools, there's this need to have things quantified and graded.

I carry a notebook with me everywhere. But that's only the first step.

For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard.