All I Wanted Was To Be A

It Seems Only Yesterday I Used To Believe There Was Nothing Under My Skin But Light. If You Cut Me I Could Shine.

Until Recently, I Thought 'occasional Poetry' Meant That You Wrote Only Occasionally.

There's This Pet Phrase About Writing That Is Bandied Around Particularly In Workshops About "finding Your Own Voice As A Poet", Which I Suppose Means That You Come Out From Under The Direct Influence Of Other Poets And Have Perhaps Found A Way To Combine Those Influences So That It Appears To Be Your Own Voice. But I Think You Could Also Put It A Different Way. You, Quote, Find Your Voice, Unquote, When You Are Able To Invent This One Character Who Resembles You, Obviously, And Probably Is More Like You Than Anyone Else On Earth, But Is Not The Equivalent To You.

The Literary World Is So Full Of Pretension, And There's Such An Enormous Gap Between How Seriously Poets Take Themselves And How Widely They're Ignored By Everybody Else.

I Felt At Some Point That I Had Nothing To Lose, And [laughs] Maybe I Was Wrong. I Think, You Know, There's Always These Little Autobiographical Secrets Behind Things. I Think I Was Really Attacking My Earlier Self, And This Kind Of Pretentious Figure.