WHICH POETS HAVE MOST INFLUENCED YOU?

Contemporary influences include C.D. Wright, Peter Gizzi, Vahni Capildeo, and Harryette Mullen. I have learnt much from the great Danish poet Inger Christensen. George Oppen, Gertrude Stein, Frank O'Hara, and John Ashbery are always important. As ever, Baudelaire, Dickinson, and Rimbaud.

ARE POEMS 'INSPIRED' OR MAINLY THE WORK OF CRAFT?

Poems are made things, first of all. In that sense, craft; poets are makers. Words and possibilities in structure are things that emerge in making. So, I guess, the inspiration, or art part. It's a kind of thinking around the materials. Refining the initial structure can take time, years even, or sometimes the poem's found quickly. You have to learn the difference.