Whenever you're writing something that's reflective, you have to put yourself through some sort of ordeal just to understand the way you're feeling.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I have written only what I have thought through, felt through and suffered through.
I have to feel what I'm writing, right down to the core.
I've always written about things that cause me to feel something.
Often as a poet I find that I am somewhat outside an experience I want to hold onto, consciously taking mental notes or writing them down in my journal - for fear that I will forget. It's not unlike being on a trip and taking pictures, your face behind a camera the whole time - the entire experience mediated by a lens.
Writing helps me to create order out of chaos and make sense of things. It helps me to understand what I've experienced, what I've felt and seen, so it becomes a little easier to handle. On the other hand, I don't want it to be just a cathartic experience, an outpouring of grief or whatever it is.
My job as a human being as well as a writer is to feel as thoroughly as possible the experience that I am part of, and then press it a little further.
I'm always looking at ways of shaking up the writing experience because I think it helps.
Writing makes you feel better, to get it all out.
Writing a book about yourself is like therapy, and you go 'Oh My God, that's the reason that happened.' Writing about it, you're forced to really examine things.
I think you sense the metaphorical resonance of what you're writing without analysing it too carefully. That leads you down dead ends. You stop imagining things and start writing towards these themes.