The poet resists the pressures of reality, including the pressures of violence, in making, in forming, the poem. The tension is in the resistance - the poem is an act of resistance.

The poet casts an eye on what is horrendous, but his truest life is in what sustains, restores, heals. Love, the act of loving, beauty, are first, fundamental truths.

Do I address issues of the spirit, of the soul, in my work? Yes, definitely. As for being a Catholic poet, I was born in, and into, Catholicism - Eastern Rite Maronite and Melkite Catholicism. Not being Catholic has never been a choice for me - it's in my family, my ancestry, going back centuries. Catholicism, for me, is always here.