In a sense, my writing day is a 24-hour one, with no cut-off point, as the work is fermenting all the time. I get started at 9 a.m. and then go on until I'm too tired to continue. After about four or five hours, my head is ready to fall on the desk. I work either at home or in the library. When I'm writing a novel I'll spend months or even years researching. I've been researching my current novel for the last two years. I wait for the facts to be absorbed deeply enough before starting to write. I spent time in Greece to research Fugitive Pieces [her prize-winning novel about the Holocaust, published in 1996], because part of it is set there. I found an intensely beautiful landscape, full of places where terrible things have happened, leaving no visible scars. That disparity is powerful.
Writing poetry is different from fiction. If something is going to be a poem, usually the idea will form quite quickly. I write what I can and then go back to it later. It takes a long time to know what the poem wants to be. Writing poetry is not something you can pursue doggedly. You have to be receptive so that it finds you.
After lunch I usually take my 14-month-old daughter for a walk. I live in downtown Toronto, but my apartment is in a lovely residential pocket of the city. This makes it possible to be something of a recluse, which I need the deeper I get into the book. I love walking through Toronto's ravine system. In the 1950s a hurricane passed through the city and created flood plains that became parkland. You can traverse the entire city on walking paths which are part of a system of forests and rivers below the city streets.
Part of my time is always spent investigating where I live - geologically, archaeologically - seeking out parts of the city that are not immediately obvious. I try to get out of the city whenever I can, too. Exploring different landscapes is becoming increasingly important to me.
I spend between 4 and 6 p.m. doing practical things, like paying bills and shopping. This is absorption-time rather than time away from work. Ideas can happen when you are doing something else. The distractions of everyday life are absolutely necessary to one's work.
In between projects I devour novels and poems, but once I'm deeply into writing a book, it's harder to surrender to another's fictional voice. One writer who gives me courage is John Berger. I find his humanism and implied morality very powerful.
My day ends at about 8.30 p.m., when I have bathed and fed my daughter and put her to bed. At that point I'm completely exhausted, too.
(In conversation with Katie Donovan)
Anne Michaels' new collection of poetry, Skin Divers, is published by Bloomsbury on October 7th at £9.99 in UK