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
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
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
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
The mirror is believed the way a poem is believed. It's believed because it's there. — 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
The voice does go up in a poem. It is an address, even if it is to oneself. — 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 write plays and poetry at the same time, and I'm always refining, but I'm not obsessive about it. It's what I… — 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
The number of people who read a poem is not as important as how the poem affects those who read it. — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
That's another pompous expression that is out of fashion, to say that poetry is a gift. It sounds pompous because you say,… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
I have never felt inhibited in trying to write as well as the greatest English poets. — 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
