Of the individual poems, some are more lyric and some are more descriptive or narrative. Each poem is fixed in a moment. All those moments written or read together take on the movement and architecture of a narrative.
I started to send my work to journals when I was 26, which was just a question of when I got the courage up. They were mostly journals I had been reading for the previous six or seven years.
I'm addicted to email, but other than that, there are practical things - being able to buy a book on the internet that you can't find in your local bookshop. This could be a lifeline if you live further from the sources.
Clearly, once the student is no longer a student the possibilities of relationship are enlarged.
We sometimes received - and I would read - 200 manuscripts a week. Some of them were wonderful, some were terrible; most were mediocre. It was like the gifts of the good and bad fairies.
I don't think it's by accident that I was first attracted to translating two French women poets.
I don't know whether a poem has be there to help to develop something. I think it's there for itself, for what the reader finds in it.
I think there is something about coming to a city to work that puts you in touch with it in a different way.
