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At the age of seventeen, I left school. I went to university, and I wrote my first attempts at poetry in a room in a flat at the edge of the city.

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.

I wanted to write poetry almost a little more than I wanted to eat.

I wanted to be a poet when I was 20; I had no interest in fiction or biography and precious little interest in history, but those three elements in my life have become the most important.

I was a 16-year-old girl at one point, so of course I wrote poetry.

At the age of 15, a teacher had asked me what I wanted to do for a career, and without knowing why or even how I replied that I wanted to be a poet.

In my late teenage years, I developed a real passion for it, and wrote a lot of poetry.

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

I wrote a lot of poetry when I was a teenager - mostly desperate love poetry!

I made myself into a poet because it was the first thing I really loved. It was an act of will.