I'm not the guy to ask about politics. I'm a gag writer.

I know many writers who first dictate passages then polish what they have dictated. I speak then I polish - occasionally I do windows.

All I knew about Ethiopia was from a few records that I like as well as what I read about the famine. But you get there and it's another world. It's filled with art and music and poetry and intellectuals and writers - all kinds of people.

I began the way nearly everybody I ever heard of - I began writing poetry. And I find that to be quite usual with writers their trying their hand at poetry.

I don't like political poetry and I don't write it. If this question was pointing towards that I think it is missing the point of the American tradition which is always apolitical even when the poetry comes out of politically active writers.

I'm quite sure that most writers would sustain real poetry if they could but it takes devotion and talent.

So I really began as a failed poet - although when I first wanted to be a writer I learned to write prose by reading poetry.

I was a visual artist primarily and a writer even from a very young age. I wrote a lot of stories and poetry and... I had a desire to create always. And I always had a desire to show my work.

When you translate poetry in particular you're obliged to look at how the writer with whom you're working puts together words sentences phrases the triple tension between the line of verse the syntax and the sentence.

I have experienced healing through other writers' poetry but there's no way I can sit down to write in the hope a poem will have healing potential. If I do I'll write a bad poem.