"So what if a piece of wood discovers it’s a violin..." - Arthur Rimbaud

Strands of autobiography, a deeply sensuous ecology of place, historical narratives; the inner world of imagination and the often difficult realities of the postcolonial nation are interwoven in McWatt's bold but carefully worked out architecture. Peepal Tree

His poems are direct and arresting, playful, full of startling imagery, and are hilarious, passionate and erotic as often as they are political - often managing to be all these things at once - Maura Dooley

Poetry matters because it is a tool for helping us to discover who we are. As individuals, as Caribbean peoples, as citizens of the world. Olive Senior

...the communication of the dead/is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living. - from Part 1 of 'Little Gidding', T. S. Eliot

A keeper of the artistic estate, a custodian of griefs and wonders - Seamus Heaney

I, too, sing America. - 'I, Too', Langston Hughes

...if poetry is a method of approaching truths, and each of us with a human soul and 'a tongue in oor heids' can make an approach toward a truth, poetry is inherently democratic. - Kathleen Jamie