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You don't become a poet if you want to make any money.

I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.

I entered a poem in a poetry contest around 1987, and the poem won and I received $1,000 for it. That made me realize that maybe what I was writing was worth reading to people. After that, for some reason, I turned to novels and I've written mainly novels ever since.

I didn't make any money from my writing until much later. I published about 80 stories for nothing. I spent on literature.

How much money you get, depends on lots of extraneous things. It depends on how good you are at turning poetry into a marketable product, which is something it was never supposed to be. That's why many people suppose that the better the poet you are the lower your income should be, and that's probably true.

I have been writing poetry since 1975. My first poetry book was published in 1986.

I never expected to earn money out of writing. In fact, the idea of getting published was too bourgeois. Then, in England, I realised that writing a book was something you could do without it being laughable.

I earn more than I thought I would when I became a poet.

On a practical level, poetry isn't something anybody has really made a great living at. I might sell some books and, once in a while, someone might pay to hear me read.

Well, I like to write poetry. I'm a published poet.