[Andrew Frisardi]

It was conducted on Walcott's 84th birthday, in St. Lucia. And Walcott reads some of his poetry and talks craft. Worth a listen (28 minute audio, on BBC):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0495r41

[Bill Carpenter]

Thanks, Andrew, but I was not able to play this from the link. I consoled myself with this interview in the Paris Review from 1986:

http://www.theparisreview.org/interv...-derek-walcott

This passage stood out, among many:

I come from a place that likes grandeur; it likes large gestures; it is not inhibited by flourish; it is a rhetorical society; it is a society of physical performance; it is a society of style. The highest achievement of style is rhetoric, as it is in speech and performance. It isn’t a modest society. A performer in the Caribbean has to perform with the right flourish. A calypsonian performer is equivalent to a bullfighter in the ring. He has to come over. He can write the wittiest calypso, but if he’s going to deliver it, he has to deliver it well, and he has to hit the audience with whatever technique he has. Modesty is not possible in performance in the Caribbean—and that’s wonderful. It’s better to be large and to make huge gestures than to be modest and do tiptoeing types of presentations of oneself. Even if it’s a private platform, it is a platform. The voice does go up in a poem. It is an address, even if it is to oneself. And the greatest address is in the rhetoric. I grew up in a place in which if you learned poetry, you shouted it out. Boys would scream it out and perform it and do it and flourish it. If you wanted to approximate that thunder or that power of speech, it couldn’t be done by a little modest voice in which you muttered something to someone else. I came out of that society of the huge gesture. And literature is like that, I mean theatrical literature is like that, whether it’s Greek or whatever. The recitation element in poetry is one I hope I never lose because it’s an essential part of the voice being asked to perform. If we have poets we’re really asking them, Okay, tell me a poem. Generally the implication is, Mutter me a poem. I’m not in that group.

[Andrew Frisardi]

The recitation element in poetry is one I hope I never lose because it’s an essential part of the voice being asked to perform.

He is a wonderful reader/reciter, isn't he?

Bill, try this link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/arti...nate-traveller.

There's a picture of Walcott's home and of St. Lucia there, and one of Walcott and Maxwell.

[ross hamilton hill]

Andrew blocked here too, probably a copyright thing, I'll go onto YouTube maybe he's there.

[Andrew Frisardi]

Ross, try googling "Walcott Maxwell BBC." Did anyone at all find that the link worked? Just curious.

[William A. Baurle]

Walcott's one of my all-time favorites. One of the few poets I actually enjoy listening to as much as reading. Much of his "The Schooner Flight " is branded into my noggin, one line in particular I'll never forget:

...but none of them go fuck with my poetry again.

The first link, in the opening post, said "episode is not now available", or some such; the second link you gave, Andrew, worked for me, but only for text.