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 strong thing.
Derek WalcottRead
I don't believe that poetry is in danger because nobody wants to read it or appreciate it. There is a tremendous audience for it on any given day or night. You just have to know where to look.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Poetry still holds value and has an audience; it's just about finding them.
Derek Walcott's quote emphasizes that despite the perception that poetry is losing its appeal, it actually continues to thrive with a significant audience waiting to engage with it. The onus is on the poet and the readers to seek out spaces where poetry is celebrated, indicating that the art form is not in danger, but rather needs to be rediscovered by those who may overlook it.
Themes
PoetryAudienceAppreciationArtFinding
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of the arts, quoting Walcott can highlight the ongoing relevance of poetry.
More from Derek Walcott
All quotes →Creating a poem is a continual process of re-creating your ignorance, in the sense of not knowing what's coming next.
Derek WalcottRead
A long time ago, I thought, as a writer in the Caribbean, 'I don't ever want to have to write 'It was great in Paris.'' Because I don't think, proportionately speaking, that one's experience in a city as opposed to, say, a village in St. Lucia, is superior to the other.
Derek WalcottRead
My mother was a schoolteacher and very, very encouraging. She understood what it meant when I said I wanted to be a writer; both me and my brother wrote.
Derek WalcottRead
When I went to college - when I read Shakespeare or Dickens or Scott - I just felt that, as a citizen of England, a British citizen, this was as much my heritage as any schoolboy's. That is one of the things the Empire taught, that apart from citizenship, the synonymous inheritance of the citizenship was the literature.
Derek WalcottRead
The truest writers are those who see language not as a linguistic process but as a living element.
Derek WalcottRead
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