Back Quote by Derek Walcott

Even though I was a reluctant reader in junior high and high school, I found myself writing poems in the back of class.

— Matt de la Pena

When I was nine, the teacher asked us to write a piece about our village fete. He read mine in class. I was encouraged…

— Eugene Ionesco

My mother asked me what I wanted for my birthday, so I said I wanted to read poetry with her.

— Guy Johnson

Some people ask, 'How do you attract the young and so many different people when your poetry is complicated and different?' I say, 'My…

— Mahmoud Darwish

If we're trying to excite young people about reading, we need to be experiencingbookjoy ourselves so that we have references to make. It's important…

— Pat Mora

A lot of my activity in the theatre, and even in writing poems, was a kind of retrospective aggro on the English teacher who…

— Tony Harrison

My teaching was animated by what I was reading and being excited by as a poet.

— Seamus Heaney

I actually remember celebrating National Poetry Day at school; I remember having to write and read a load.

— Tinie Tempah

I was lucky to have read a lot of poetry when I was younger; it helped me to remember a way to write.

— Benjamin Clementine

Poetry had great powers over me from my childhood, and today the poems live in my memory which I read at the age of…

— Bayard Taylor

Part of what I try to do in schools is take poetry off of a pedestal and make it a little more accessible and…

— Sarah Kay

My father read poetry to me, encouraged me to memorize poems. But the writing of it was quite a different thing.

— C. K. Williams