What I like about Sapphics is the music of a non-iambic metric in English.

There is always an element of play in form, however 'serious' the expression.

'Love, Death and the Changing of the Seasons' is a kind of novel in verse about the arc of an urban lesbian love affair - and I suppose there is a certain amount of voyeurism in the consumption of fiction! The 'Sancerre' poems here are more contemplative and about the relationship of the individual to local and wider histories.

I wonder what it means about American literary culture and its transmission when I consider the number of American poets who earn their living teaching creative writing in universities. I’ve ended up doing that myself.

I try to write everyday. I do that much better over here than when I’m teaching. I always rewrite, usually fairly close-on which is to say first draft, then put it aside for 24 hours then more drafts.

I’ve been an inveterate reader of literary magazines since I was a teenager. There are always discoveries. You’re sitting in your easy chair, reading; you realize you’ve read a story or a group of poems four times, and you know, Yes, I want to go farther with this writer.

I crave uncomplicated quiet, and the sky.

I don’t think it’s by accident that I was first attracted to translating two French women poets.

Everyone thinks they’re going to write one book of poems or one novel.

The phenomenon of university creative writing programs doesn’t exist in France. The whole idea is regarded as a novelty, or an oddity.