Quotes from Michael Helm

The idea that language can be recombined to create new forms, new things, is of course very old in poetry.

I seem always to have two or three novels going at once. It takes me a long time to finish one.

I love poetry, read it a lot, but make no claim to being able to write it.

I like a great degree of compression. I like to mix lateral steps with forward ones. I don't want the prose ever to feel simply functional - at least not for any stretch.

I just write what I want to read, and sometimes keeping it interesting means adding one more element that ends up adding another year to the work.