How did I first engage with Poetry?
I think when I was about 3 and an aunt began to teach me to read: she wrote simple sentences, with a rhyme in all of them. And I loved it, relishing the sounds as if they were a special box of sweets given to me. I played with the words too, I remember, trying to read them in different orders. They sounded so good on the tongue: dog, frog, cat, mat. All very simple but to me as a child they were as elaborate and wonderful as anything I might come across as an adult. She evoked in me a love of rhyme, and I still have that, really enjoying, in particular, internal rhyme in a poem and many of my poems have that. I also take huge pleasure in reading Japanese and Chinese poetry, in translation; I appreciate its subtle and skillful simplicity.
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