Writers who inspired me

There are so many writers who have inspired me.  My very early influences would be Greek drama such as Sophocles’ plays Antigone and Electra. I also enjoyed Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales as well as the bard himself, Shakespeare. I am a great fan of Dylan Thomas’ radio play Under Milkwood and as a teenager I loved some of Tennyson‘s poems. African-American women writers were a major influence years ago, my first encounter with writers who were, like myself, black and female; writers such as Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, Alice Walker, Michelle Cliff and Audre Lorde. Derek Walcott is my favourite all-time poet and I’ve been very inspired by the experimentation of Kamau Braithwaite’s poetry. Latterly I have loved Jacob Ross’ A Way to Catch the Dust, Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, Maggie Gee’s My Cleaner, Halldor Laxness’s Independent People, Mathew Kneale’s English Passengers, Kazuo Ighiguro’s Remains of the Day, Patrick Neate’s Twelve Bar Blues and so many contemporary British writers such as Lawrence Scott, Ali Smith, Caryl Phillips to name a few.

© Bernardine Evaristo

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