I was always creatively stubborn, adverse to editing by others, and wanted to use the kind of Ukrainian we spoke among ourselves rather than the more artificial prescribed literary Ukrainian. The problem was the greatest in prose, where editors would change my language because "it sounded better this way." My poetry they left alone probably out of deference to that hallowed genre.

In fact, the very phrase "teaching creative writing" sounds to me oxymoronic. How can you teach someone to be creative?

Imagination is so much more fertile than life.

It is true that I didn't write any poetry between 1995 and 2011. The reason for this was probably because I had stayed away from fiction for so long and couldn't tear myself away from it.

I think I view myself primarily as a fiction writer. Poetry is more of a "hobby," a time of rest from the hard work of writing fiction.

I must say that, on the whole, I prefer fiction to poetry.

That is one more reason why I write in English only right now. I prefer writing in the language I hear around me for the people by whom I am surrounded.