Basically I get to exorcise my autobiographical impulses in poetry. I explore other people's lives in my fiction. Often for me fiction embodies the choices I did not make, the paths I did not follow. Poems are built out of sounds and silence. Rhythm and sound values are far more important in poetry than in fiction.
Images are central.
Poetry to me is more organic, more passionate, more spiritual, more intense. What happens next. Fiction to me is an art of empathy and imagination. Each novel is like a small world I inhabit for a period of two or three years, and then move on to another small world. Usually I do.