The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948-2013

´He gives us more than himself or ´a world´; he gives us a sense of infinity embodied in the language.´ Alongside Joseph Brodsky´s words of praise one might mention the more concrete honours that the renowned poet Derek Walcott has received: a MacArthur Fellowship; the Queen´s Gold Medal for Poetry; the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948-2013 draws from every stage of the poet´s storied career. Here are examples of his very earliest work, like ´In My Eighteenth Year,´ published when the poet himself was still a teenager; his first widely celebrated verse, like ´A Far Cry from Africa,´ which speaks of violence, of loyalties divided in one´s very blood; his mature work, like ´The Schooner Flight´ from The Star-Apple Kingdom; and his late masterpieces, like the tender ´Sixty Years After,´ from the 2010 collection White Egrets. Across sixty-five years, Walcott has grappled with the themes that have defined his work as they have defined his life: the unsolvable riddle of identity; the painful legacy of colonialism on his native Caribbean island of St. Lucia; the mysteries of faith and love and the natural world; the Western canon, celebrated and problematic; the trauma of growing old, of losing friends, family, one´s own memory. This collection, selected by Walcott´s friend the English poet Glyn Maxwell, will prove as enduring as the questions, the passions, that have driven Walcott to write for more than half a century.