WHAT TENDS TO PROMPT A NEW POEM?

A shape.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN POETRY AND PROSE?

Poetry can say anything that prose says, but it has to get there far more quickly and in much less space. I think this sense of spatial, psychological pressure is the main point of difference.

WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES ARE IDEAL FOR WRITING POETRY?

Silence and darkness. Four-ish in the morning is good, before the world has woken and reality has dislocated from dream. However, I would never recommend setting an alarm in order to work at such a time: this is when I naturally wake.

WHICH POET WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO TALK TO – AND WHY?

Inger Christensen (Denmark). For some reason, poetry and mathematics do not seem to be part of the conversation in Australia, and I find myself increasingly hungry to discuss such things. Despite having been written between thirty and sixty years ago, Christensen's titles It, Alphabet, and Poem on Death continue to agitate and astound.

WHAT DO POETS NEED MOST: SOLITUDE OR A COTERIE?

Being with people has many advantages, but writing poems is not one of them. I think a coterie may be a most dangerous thing!

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM REVIEWS OF YOUR WORK?

I tend to break style with each new book, and have sometimes been accused of not having found a 'voice'. I have also been labelled as not caring enough for the reader. I don't understand this. Who is the reader? Of course, I receive some positive comments too, but I think I learn the most from the act of writing itself.

IF PLATO ALLOWED YOU TO KEEP ONE POEM OR POETRY COLLECTION IN HIS REPUBLIC, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

Well, although it is obviously not all poetry, it would be the Bible (King James). This book, above all others, gives and gives and gives.

DO YOU HAVE A FAVOURITE LINE OF POETRY (OR COUPLET)?

I am not trying to be cryptic or smart, but it would be the invisible couplet in Shakespeare's Sonnet 126. These parenthesised empty lines are so modern, so pregnant with limitless meanings. Out of context, they may offer little, but read as the culmination of the 'Young Man' sequence, they are glorious.

IS POETRY GENERALLY APPRECIATED BY THE READING PUBLIC?

It would seem not, but I really don't know.

JORDIE ALBISTON'S latest titles are The Weekly Poem: 52 exercises in closed & open forms (Puncher & Wattmann, 2014) and Jack & Mollie (& Her) (UQP, 2016). She lives in Melbourne.