Derek Walcott
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Some time in the last two years, I decided to undertake a reading of epics (The Odyssey), verse novels (Omeros and Prophets, by Derek Walcott and Kwame Dawes, respectively). I called myself doing research for my own verse novel. Well. I got about more than half way through The Odyssey before I gave up the…
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Then after Eden, was there one surprise? O yes, the awe of Adam at the first bead of sweat. Thenceforth, all flesh had to be sown with salt, to feel the edge of seasons, fear and harvest joy that was difficult, but was, at least, his own. The snake? It would not trust on its…
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Then after Eden, was there one surprise? O yes, the awe of Adam at the first bead of sweat. Thenceforth, all flesh had to be sown with salt, to feel the edge of seasons, fear and harvest joy that was difficult, but was, at least, his own. The snake? It would not trust on its…
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Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs? Where is your tribal memory? Sirs, in that gray vault. The sea. The sea has locked them up. The sea is History. First, there was the heaving oil, heavy as chaos; then, likea light at the end of a tunnel, the lantern of a caravel, and that was…
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Deprived of their original language, the captured and indentured tribes create their own, accreting and secreting fragments of an old, an epic vocabulary, from Asia and from Africa, but to an ancestral, an ecstatic rhythm in the blood that cannot be subdued by slavery or indenture, while nouns are renamed and the given names of…
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I am starting to work my slow way through Omeros. I stopped to google Omeros – Derek Walcott. I found the following link. It’s him reading a very brief excerpt and then taking questions from the audience. You will have to scroll through the list of names to find Walcott. They also have episodes with…
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I’ve been flirting with this book on and off throughout the year. However, as the year nears its completion, I find the very first poem of the Nobel prize-winning book by Derek Walcott haunting me. Take a look. Book 1: Chapter 1 – Section 1 (Excerpt) "This is how, one sunrise, we cut down them…
Tichaona Chinyelu 