It wasn't a deliberate decision to become a poet. It was something I found myself doing - and loving. Language became an addiction.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
At college, I wanted to be a poet. I liked the extremely concentrated language, the atmosphere of otherworldliness.
When you begin to write poems because you love language, because you love poetry. Something happens that makes you write poems. And the writing of poems is incredibly pleasurable and addictive.
I began to imitate what I was reading, and I started to become a poet, even though what I was writing were not good poems.
I'm a poet, and I spent my life in poetry.
I chose poetry. Actually, poetry chose me.
I thought that if one wanted to be a writer, one had to write novels because I didn't know that one could be a poet.
Poetry was one of the things that interested me most as I was growing up. I used to write it in my head all the time. I still think the very greatest pleasure in life is to write a poem.
And in a way, that's been a help to me, because I take great passions for a particular poet - sometimes it lasts for many years, sometimes only for a while. This happens to everybody.
It's absolutely crucial to maintain my life as a poet.
I made myself into a poet because it was the first thing I really loved. It was an act of will.