Ian on Sunday

Hardly a month or even a week went by in my working life without one or other or both of these men appearing in the world’s headlines.

Sparks from the central fire – I was lucky to be near enough to feel the blaze these men ignited in the world ●     Derek Walcott, or rather his poetry, entered my life when he was twenty and I was seventeen.

These are no more than sparks snatched from the fire of their lives – encounters with two of the men who were most memorable in my life.

Such men as these walk onto a field of play, or enter a room, and their life-force brings everyone to silence and attention – these were two men who in their very different ways set my mind alight.

For a short while one summer day out of nowhere in my life she flashed like a comet across my sky.

I thank whatever Gods that be that even at the age of 78 my mind remains restless and eager to absorb new facts, new theories, new ways of looking at life and the world, new stories of mankind’s continual search for perfected knowledge, new illuminations of the spirit.

Anyone who has played sport at the highest level knows that sinking nervous, almost fearful feeling before a big event.

Not long ago I wrote a column throwing freezing water on the usefulness of election manifestos or indeed any master plan.

Every nation in the world obsessively continues to measure success by the state of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

I will very soon be 78. A young man once wrote – or rather sent an email – to me asking about the magazine Kyk-Over-Al which I used to edit once upon a time.

The world is suffering from giganticism.  Bigger is considered better and biggest best. 

The poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins – glancing and incandescent – is some of the most extraordinary to be found in English.

I am not a horse-racing fan nor a lover of horses however thoroughly bred into strength and beauty they may be but once a friend of mine and connoisseur of many of life’s artistic achievements, including that of great horse-racing, sent me a piece of marvellous writing which has ever since figured right at the top of my list of the best sports articles I have ever read.

In Caribbean literature there has always been a vigorous strain of oral composition existing alongside the written tradition.

A few nights ago I had a vivid dream of my father.

Karl Popper, one of the very greatest thinkers of his, or any, age, was modest in expressing his philosophical findings.

It was announced last month that Derek Walcott had won the T S Eliot Poetry Prize for 2010.

The original Treaty of Chaguaramas which established Caricom in 1973 carefully provided no machinery for exercising central powers of implementation.

Many days I pass our National Library, and I never fail to bestow a silent blessing on those who work within its rooms quietly, rendering service of inestimable value.

The Guyana Olympic Association kindly invited me to speak at their recent Annual Awards ceremony.