I prefer to explore the most intimate moments, the smaller, crystallized details we all hinge our lives on.

As an African-American, as a woman I think that I've been sensitized to the way in which history privileges the white male and the way in which certain aspects of history, the things that we are taught in school, the things that are handed down never, never entered the picture though they might have been very important.

All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and think, This is when I became myself.

In working on a poem, I love to revise. Lots of younger poets don't enjoy this, but in the process of revision I discover things

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

We tend to be so bombarded with information, and we move so quickly, that there's a tendency to treat everything on the surface level and process things quickly. This is antithetical to the kind of openness and perception you have to have to be receptive to poetry.poetry seems to exist in a parallel universe outside daily life in America.

Creative writing and literacy go hand and hand.