Prizes aren't essential. What is essential is poetry itself, it's what is said, it is clarity, it's loyalty, those are the essential values, the literary values.

As a journalist, I never isolated myself. I was a journalist at a daily newspaper and every day I went out on the street. Every day I had contact with people. I interviewed the most important writers of the twentieth century, and into the twenty-first century, from Simone de Beauvoir, Marguerite Duras, and Marguerite Yourcenar to Christa Wolf.

People ask me why I am a feminist. Because I am a woman of freedom and equality and it is not possible to have freedom in the world when half of humanity has no rights. Because we are more than half of humanity. There are more women than men. This is not a fight of so-called minorities.

People ask me almost every day, Why? You are successful, you have kids, you have grandchildren, so why? Feminist women are seen as unsatisfied. But all women in the world, if they are well aware of inequality, are unsatisfied women. They don't have the same rights as men, and there is no freedom until there is equality between men and women.

My erotic poetry is not poetry that uses vernacular words. It is a very erotic poetry, but I never use anything, for example, that is not in the dictionary. I don't like to be ugly, I seek out what is beautiful, and if my great search is for freedom and beauty, I can't be vulgar, ordinary.

I think that one of the tasks of feminist women - mainly women of culture - in our time is to seek out those women who were only forgotten because they were women.

I don't offend anyone, I don't use anyone, I don't exploit anyone.

What do I think of Pussy Riot actions? The act can be extremely positive if it is an act to call attention to the fact that things in their country are really bad for women, otherwise it is purely a media event that only obfuscates women's struggle.

I think the obligation of a poet is not to be in an ivory tower it is not to be isolated but to be among people.

I think that all my books are political, I think that I have a political body of work. I am essentially a political woman, but above all I am a poet. I am a poetess.