You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus, in the news, or just what's in your heart.
Poetry and prayer are very similar.
Christmas is taken very seriously in this household. I believe in Father Christmas, and there's no way I'd do anything to undermine that belief.
Auden said poetry makes nothing happen. But I wonder if the opposite could be true. It could make something happen.
I grew up in a bookless house - my parents didn't read poetry, so if I hadn't had the chance to experience it at school I'd never have experienced it. But I loved English, and I was very lucky in that I had inspirational English teachers, Miss Scriven and Mr. Walker, and they liked us to learn poems by heart, which I found I loved doing.
The poem is the literary form of the 21st century. It's able to connect young people in a deep way to language... it's language as play.
I like to think that I'm a sort of poet for our times.
Like the sand and the oyster, it's a creative irritant. In each poem, I'm trying to reveal a truth, so it can't have a fictional beginning.
I write quite a lot of sonnets, and I think of them almost as prayers: short and memorable, something you can recite.
The moment of inspiration can come from memory, or language, or the imagination, or experience - anything that makes an impression forcibly enough for language to form.
I think the dangers are different now. Our abuse of the planet and our resources is an anxiety.
I still read Donne, particularly his love poems.
The poem is a form of texting... it's the original text. It's a perfecting of a feeling in language - it's a way of saying more with less, just as texting is.
Poets deal in writing about feelings and trying to find the language and images for intense feelings.
It's always good when women win things in fiction because it tends to be more male-dominated, unlike poetry, which is more equal.
I always say that I'll have a go and see whether the poem works and if it does, then fine.
Every day is a gift with a child, no matter what problems you have.
Edinburgh is my favourite city. We'll be doing a lot of children's theatre and galleries.
Between 9am and 3pm is when I work most intensely.
When you have a child, your previous life seems like someone else's. It's like living in a house and suddenly finding a room you didn't know was there, full of treasure and light.
