Derek Walcott
Derek Walcott
Sir Derek Alton Walcott, KCSL OBE OCCis a Saint Lucia poet and playwright. He received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is currently Professor of Poetry at the University of Essex. His works include the Homeric epic poem Omeros, which many critics view "as Walcott's major achievement." In addition to having won the Nobel, Walcott has won many literary awards over the course of his career, including an Obie Award in 1971 for his play Dream on Monkey Mountain,...
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth23 January 1930
black-history elements language
… the truest writers are those who see language not as a linguistic process but as a living element…
across art artist cultured direction gentlemen image individual keeping means money sponsors supportive university
This image of us as being art supportive and very cultured is false, ... The money that we have now that is keeping this place going has come from Canada-the University of Toronto. When you come across sponsors like these gentlemen we have today, what it does for the individual artist is enormous. It means that we can feel that there is some direction to our lives.
cat vases shelves
She's a rare vase, out of a cat's reach, on its shelf.
wind mind damn
Damn wind shift sudden as a woman mind.
sunset dark sea
I know when dark-haired evening put on her bright silk at sunset, and, folding the sea sidled under the sheet with her starry laugh, that there'd be no rest, there'd be no forgetting. Is like telling mourners round the graveside about resurrection, they want the dead back.
enough console
The classics can console. But not enough.
special language english-language
The English language is nobody's special property.
horse stars block
I too saw the wooden horse blocking the stars.
past long too-much
We make too much of that long groan which underlines the past.
white fire owl
Slowly my body grows a single sound, slowly I become a bell, an oval, disembodied vowel, I grow, an owl, an aureole, white fire poesia "Metamorfosi, I. Luna
heart mirrors letters
Love After Love all your life, whom you have ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.
turns
How can I turn from Africa and live?
sleep eden evil
In Eden who sleeps happiest? The serpent.
stars trying study
I try to forget what happiness was, and when that don't work, I study the stars.