Quotes About Derek Walcott

I don't feel like a celebrity. Poetry justifies celebrity. It's good to have respect for a poet.

You can't read to yourself. It's your inner ear that hears a poem. If you hear a poet read his own work, it becomes very exciting. The melody is a great part of it.

My delight in things is definitely Caribbean. It has to do with landscape and food. The fact that my language may have a metrical direction is because that's the shape of the language. I didn't make that shape.

The Caribbean was borne like an elliptical basinin the hands of acolytes, and a people were absolvedof a history which they did not commit.

I am not in England; I live in the Caribbean. So I am not hungover by prizes and awards because it does not happen very often.

I would enjoy having dinner with the poet/playwright Derek Walcott.

There is no one more deserving of a place in Poets' Corner. Ted Hughes introduced a new kind of landscape into English poetry. The most compelling aspect of his work was his intimacy with nature.

My first book of poems was published privately in 1949. That was my mother. The book was '25 Poems.' It cost 200 dollars.

The poet complains or points out the discontent that lies at the heart of man, the individual man, and how can that be redeemed?