I don't think poetry has a readership anywhere, really, that's that big. — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
When you get a class reciting some great poems, it'll tear your heart out. — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
I don't want to write poems about the royal wedding. I would have to be moved by the event. — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
I don't feel like a celebrity. Poetry justifies celebrity. It's good to have respect for a poet. — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
The mirror is believed the way a poem is believed. It's believed because it's there. — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
I can't tear up a poem and be a sound bite for you. Why is that so hard for anyone to understand? — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
The voice does go up in a poem. It is an address, even if it is to oneself. — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average. — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
Creating a poem is a continual process of re-creating your ignorance, in the sense of not knowing what's coming next. — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
For every poet it is always morning in the world; history a forgotten, insomniac night. The fate of poetry is to fall… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
How does a poet teach himself or herself? I think chiefly by imitation, chiefly by practising it as a deliberate technical exercise… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
The poet complains or points out the discontent that lies at the heart of man, the individual man, and how can that… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
I grew up in a place in which, if you learned poetry, you shouted it out. Boys would scream it out and… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
My dedication to trying to be a poet started very, very young, and I was very well encouraged by good teachers and… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
What makes a poem is the discipline inherent in making a poem: trying to fit feelings in the requisite number of syllables… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
I have never separated the writing of poetry from prayer. I have grown up believing it is a vocation, a religious vocation. — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
Poets are always making waves. I mean, you know, in an ideal situation, the ideal republic can't tolerate poets because - it… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
There are certain functions that a writer has to do. In a time of crisis, it is great to have heroic poems,… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
I can be upset by malice. Most critics are very poor poets. Poetry is a craft that takes a lot to appreciate,… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
“As human beings we’ve certainly suffered the loss of awe, the loss of sacredness, and the loss of the fact that we’re… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
“But drunkenly, or secretly, we swore, Disciples of that astigmatic saint, That we would never leave the island Until we had put… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
“There is the buried language and there is the individual vocabulary, and the process of poetry is one of excavation and of… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
The headmaster asked to read one of my poems at some celebration or other when I was about 10. When I look… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
I don't believe that poetry is in danger because nobody wants to read it or appreciate it. There is a tremendous audience… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
Look at Allen Ginsberg. In poems like 'Kaddish' and 'Howl,' you can hear a cantor between the lines. It's fully alive, and… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
Americans are not brought up with meter. They're not brought up with poetry. If you try to get them to recite, they're… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
You can't read to yourself. It's your inner ear that hears a poem. If you hear a poet read his own work,… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
There is no one more deserving of a place in Poets' Corner. Ted Hughes introduced a new kind of landscape into English… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
Good science and good art are always about a condition of awe. I don't think there is any other function for the… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
Ted Hughes is dead. That's a fact, OK. Then there's something called the poetry of Ted Hughes. The poetry of Ted Hughes… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
Rhyme is an attempt to reassemble and reaffirm the possibility of paradise. There is a wholeness, a serenity, in sounds coupling to… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
My first book of poems was published privately in 1949. That was my mother. The book was '25 Poems.' It cost 200 dollars. — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
I always knew that was what I wanted to do - to write, particularly poetry. — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
Memory that yearns to join the centre, a limb remembering the body from which it has been severed, like those bamboo thighs of the… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
I don't feel I've arrived home until I get on the beach. All my life, the theater of the sea has been a very… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
“As human beings we’ve certainly suffered the loss of awe, the loss of sacredness, and the loss of the fact that we’re not here—… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
“I shall unlearn feeling, unlearn my gift. That is greater and harder than what passes there for life.” — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
The greatest writers have been, at heart, parochial, provincial in their rootedness. — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
My mother, who is nearly ninety now, still talks continually about my father. All my life, I've been aware of her grief about his… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
My family background really only consists of my mother. She was a widow. My father died quite young; he must have been thirty-one. Then… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
Like any art, what is the most imprisoning thing is also the most delivering thing. If an actor knows he only has 12 syllables… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
