Anybody great, we're all interested in the relics. If you found an unfinished Gauguin, you'd still want to see it.
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.
As much as I like teaching and students, it's a kind of rigor, a discipline, that's against my body.
I was writing from a very, very early age. My father used to write. He died early, and my mother was a schoolteacher, so my academic background from childhood is a strong one, a good one.
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.
Visual surprise is natural in the Caribbean; it comes with the landscape, and faced with its beauty, the sigh of History dissolves.
I can't tear up a poem and be a sound bite for you. Why is that so hard for anyone to understand?
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?'
I have to live, socially, in an almost unfinished society. Among the almost great, among the almost true, among the almost honest. That allows me to describe the anguish.
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.
I think young writers ought to be heretical.
