On translating a grief you didn't live through: I keep a list of words I'm not allowed to use in the target language. It's shorter than the list of words I'm forced to use.

A small confession: I wrote the first draft of my second collection in the back of a ferry. It's full of wrong turns and engine noise, and I kept the line breaks the boat made when it rocked.

Reading list for anyone who wants to write about a harbour without writing about the sea: start with the timetables, then the shopping lists, then the poems. Nobody believes this order, and it works.