Derek Walcott Quotes
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I am not defined as a black writer in the Caribbean, but as soon as I go to America or the U.K., my place becomes black theatre. It's a little ridiculous.
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There is a force of exultation, a celebration of luck, when a writer finds himself a witness to the early morning of a culture that is defining itself, branch by branch, leaf by leaf, in that self-defining dawn, which is why, especially at the edge of the sea, it is good to make a ritual of the sunrise.
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I try to forget what happiness was,and when that don't work, I study the stars.
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How does a poet teach himself or herself? I think chiefly by imitation, chiefly by practising it as a deliberate technical exercise often. Translation, imitation, those were my methods anyway.
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I always knew that was what I wanted to do - to write, particularly poetry.
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That's another pompous expression that is out of fashion, to say that poetry is a gift. It sounds pompous because you say, 'Who gave you the gift, and what is this gift?' And the gift is where I am; the gift is what I have come out of, the people around me who, I think, are beautiful people.
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Creating a poem is a continual process of re-creating your ignorance, in the sense of not knowing what's coming next.
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The older I get, the more aware I am of the banality and indifference of a place like Trinidad to any development of the arts.
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Where I come from, we sing poetry.
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I don't think there is any such thing as a black writer or a white writer. Ultimately, there is someone whom one reads.
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Visual surprise is natural in the Caribbean; it comes with the landscape, and faced with its beauty, the sigh of History dissolves.
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Poets are always making waves. I mean, you know, in an ideal situation, the ideal republic can't tolerate poets because - it isn't that they mutter and criticize; it is that the poet does not accept the situation called the 'perfect' condition of man - in other words, perfect in the materialistic sense.
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I'm from the island of St. Lucia in the Caribbean in the Lesser Antilles, the lower part of the archipelago, which is a bilingual island - French, Creole, and English - but my education is in English.
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Like any art, what is the most imprisoning thing is also the most delivering thing. If an actor knows he only has 12 syllables in a line, the challenge is, 'How can I interpret the meaning and contain it without going one syllable over?'
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What makes a poem is the discipline inherent in making a poem: trying to fit feelings in the requisite number of syllables and lines, disciplining one's feelings.
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No masterpieces in huge frames to worship, … and yet there are the days when every street corner rounds itself into a sunlit surprise, a painting or a phrase, canoes drawn up by the market, the harbour’s blue, the barracks. So much to do still, all of it praise.
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I hate all that nonsense about not touching the colonialists' language. All that about it being corrupting and belonging to the master and making you Caliban. That thinking just denies you an outlet. You deny everything that is great from a language, whether it is Conrad or Shakespeare.
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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.
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Miscegenation is not an idea that we would have in the Caribbean. It wouldn't come up because anybody could marry anybody, you know. I'm not saying that there aren't prejudices in the Caribbean, but the idea of the word 'miscegenation' is not something that we think of.
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There's always a need at a critical time for poetry.
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I'm just a red nigger who love the sea,I had a sound colonial education,I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me,and either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation.
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I made a vow that I wouldn't be tempted by what could happen to me if I went to Europe. I thought, 'You could be absorbed in it - it's so seductive, you might lose your own search for identity.' Then, when I did finally go to Europe, I was able to resist it because I had established my own identity.
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I don't think poetry has a readership anywhere, really, that's that big.
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My generation produced some terrific writers from all over, and the great thing about it is that they were all mixed in race.