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I had written here and there about my mother in my poems. There are poems for her in my first and second books.

I was very lucky to have a mother who encouraged me to become a poet.

Even though I am the daughter of a poet, and my stepmother is also a poet, growing up, I didn't think I could understand poetry; I didn't think that it had any relevance to my life, the feelings that I endured on a day-to-day basis, until I was introduced to the right poem.

I can find some way to make poetry out of my life's experiences.

I think my poems immediately come out of the sensuous and emotional experiences I have.

I'd like to go back to poetry again. I really, really revere good poetry. It's been my private discipline.

The first thing I tried to do in the months after losing my mother was to write a poem. I found myself turning to poetry in the way so many people do - to make sense of losses. And I wrote pretty bad poems about it. But it did feel that the poem was the only place that could hold this grief.

Poems are endlessly renewable resources. Whatever you bring to them, at whatever stage of life, gets mirrored back, refracted, reread in new ways.

For better or worse, poetry is my life.

I think poetry was always where I went to deal with my deepest feelings.