I just discovered when I was, oh, 12 or 13, that I was very interested in language - and this showed itself as poetry. There was no looking back.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
When I was younger, I was so crazy about poetry that I didn't notice who was noticing. It seemed to me so tremendous and large.
The music of language became extremely important to me, and obvious to me. By the time I was seven I was writing myself. I was a poet.
Poetry had great powers over me from my childhood, and today the poems live in my memory which I read at the age of 7 or 8 years and which drove me to desperate attempts at imitation.
I was lucky to have read a lot of poetry when I was younger; it helped me to remember a way to write.
In my life, I've seen enormous increase in the consumption of poetry. When I was young, there were virtually no poetry readings.
I've been writing poems and stories since I was about 13.
I gave up on new poetry myself 30 years ago when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens in a hostile world.
I look for poetry in English because it's the only language I read.
I was 15 when I first became deeply touched by the rhythm and structure of words.
I was completely devoted to reading and books from the age of seven. It took until I was 18 to have the confidence to write poetry.