My mother was always fascinated with the fact that I could rhyme so much stuff.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My mother wrote poetry when I was young - I have an early memory of the sound of her typewriter - and my father told me inventive bedtime stories.
I saw I could rhyme words. It came simply to me. But I wrote some pretty horrible songs that I still have on tape.
There's something so wonderful about writing in rhyme where it isn't just the meaning of the words, it's the music to the words and the shape and the sound.
I was very lucky to have a mother who encouraged me to become a poet.
I was always making up rhymes. But I never thought that poetry would become my life.
My father's a preacher, my mother's a teacher, thus I rhyme.
Trying to impress my mother with words was one of my favourite pursuits.
I used to see my dad and his brothers rhyming, and I knew I wanted to do that one day. I'm like any other boy, always wanting to follow in his father's footsteps.
I was lucky to have read a lot of poetry when I was younger; it helped me to remember a way to write.
My mother read nursery rhymes to me, and my grandmother told me folk stories, but as a child I had no interest in writing whatsoever.