Derek Walcott (1930 - )

Derek Alton Walcott (born January 23, 1930) is a poet, writer and artist who was in the vanguard of the post-colonial school of English language writing.

He was born in Castries, St. Lucia.

His work, which developed independently of the schools of magic realism emerging in both South America and Europe at around the time of his birth, is intensely related to the symbolism of myth and its relationship to culture. He is best known for his epic poem, Omeros a reworking of Homeric story and tradition into a journey around the Caribbean, and beyond to the American West and London.

In 1997, he collaborated with Paul Simon on the Broadway musical The Capeman.

He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992.

The poems are by default sorted according to volume, but you can also choose to sort them alphabetically or by page views.

First Line	Comments
1 Adios, Carenage	Comment
A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt
After that hot gospeller has levelled all but the churched sky,	Comment
As for that other thing
Better a jungle in the head
Broad sun-stoned beaches.
Koening knew now there was no one on the river.
Man, I suck me tooth when I hear
Schizophrenic, wrenched by two styles,	Comment
So much rain, so much life like the swollen sky
The last leaves fell like notes from a piano
The time will come	Comment
There are so many islands!
There is a shattered palm
There were still shards of an ancient pastoral
This coral's hape ecohes the hand
Those five or six young guys
Those villages stricken with the melancholia of Sunday,
When sunset, a brass gong,
Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs?	Comment
You can't put in the ground swell of the organ