Poetry is its own medium it's very different than writing prose. Poetry can talk in an imagistic sense it has particular ways of catching an environment.

Now I think poetry will save nothing from oblivion but I keep writing about the ordinary because for me it's the home of the extraordinary the only home.

Frankly writing poetry for children is plain old fun and I consider myself blessed to have such a delightful career.

I have always written poetry but I have never applied it to songwriting.

I used to write sonnets and various things and moved from there into writing prose which incidentally is a lot more interesting than poetry including the rhythms of prose.

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've always written. When I was in school the only teacher who ever liked me was my creative writing teacher. I used to enter poetry competitions and I don't think I ever lost one. So I had the idea for a while of being some kind of poet.

Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear.

Then I discovered I loved writing poetry more than fiction.

Even the people who have had success and made money writing these books of fiction seem to feel the need to pretend it's no big deal or part of a natural progression from poetry to fiction but often it's really just about the money the perceived prestige.