David Malouf

I got very used to sort of crawling out of bed and coming and curling up behind an open, half-open door in, you know, the wooden house that we would have lived in in those days, where my parents were playing cards with friends or whatever, and I got used to overhearing what they said.

And I think that was my first training, not to be a writer, but for being a writer.

No, no.

I don't write any fiction, which is what keeps you to a routine of having to work every day.

And if I have...

an idea for a poem or the beginnings of a poem, I jot it down and if the poem comes, that's good.

If it doesn't, I say to myself, which is quite true, that I've already done enough so I don't feel any pressure.

Well, it means you have to make your life work each day with other things.

And if you've actually been a writer who was used to writing, holding your life together, that's not so easy.

Oh, some reading.

My eyes are not great for the moment, so I can only read really by daylight.

So I do some reading.

I do walking.

I walk on the beach every day, which is great.

Oh, it depends what it's set off by.

It might be set off by hearing something somebody says.

It might be set off by

perceiving something that strikes you as new.

It's often set off by language, so reading and often misapprehension in reading is what brings a phrase to mind that can be the beginning of a poem.

No, no, I mean a line that you misread.