I read everything. EVERYTHING. As a kid I read the backs of cereal packs during breakfast, I couldn't stop reading. If it is well-written, I'll read it (okay, cereal boxes not so much): fiction, poetry, non-fiction, whatever. But for me only the short story is actually capable of perfection, and I know that because I have read many stories I consider perfect. They cause me physical pain when I read them, and that's what I want from great writing. To be shaken up, to be a different person, when I finish reading a story, even if that story is half a page long. And the best short stories do that, again and again and again. Who wouldn't be addicted to that kind of experience? I tell anyone who says that short stories leave them unsatisfied, wanting more, that they clearly have never read a really great story, because they wouldn't feel like that. No way.
On the subject of poetry, I have two poems in the British poetry journal Tears in the Fence, which is my first appearance in a print poetry journal, I feel like it's a really momentous event for me. The poems are a sort of sequence (can two be a sequence?) which is also a first, and they are imaginatively titled "1" and "2". Must get better at titles. So, the year of poetry is going very well.
I wanted to leave you with this, which is part of what I want to talk more about, but here, watch this video for a start, maybe this will kick of a discussion:
