A collection spanning the whole of Derek Walcott's celebrated, inimitable, essential career"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 honors that the renowned poet Derek Walcott has received: a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship; the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry; the Nobel Prize in Literature.The Poetry of Derek Walcot...

Three plays by the Nobel-laureate Derek Walcott, brought together for the first time in The Haitian TrilogyIn the history plays that comprise The Haitian Trilogy-- Henri Christophe, Drums and Colours and The Haytian Earth--Derek Walcott, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, uses verse to tell the story of his native West Indies as a four-hundred-year cycle of war, conquest and r...

In Moon-Child, the poet and playwright Derek Walcott returns to the island of St. Lucia for a lush and vivid tale of spirituality and the supernatural. In this lyrical new work, the crafty Planter (who may or may not be the Devil in disguise) schemes to take over the island for development. Between him and his goal lies the Bouton family, whose ailing matriarch strikes a bargain: if any of her three sons can get the Devil to feel anger and human weakness, the islanders will win th...

Two dazzling dramas on American themes from the Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, Walker and Ghost Dance.On a cold winter's day on the Dakota plains, Catherine Weldon receives a caller, Kicking Bear, bringing news of Indian rebellion. In the fort nearby, a tiny community splinters apart over how to react. In Ghost Dance, first performed in 1989, Walcott turns a story with a foregone conclusion -- Sitting Bull and his Sioux followers will die a...

This essay collection includes the renowned poet's Nobel lecture, literary criticism, reflections on Caribbean life, and more.Nobel laureate Derek Walcott was a leading voice in 20th century Caribbean literature. What the Twilight Says, Walcott's first collection of essays, draws together pieces originally published in The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, and elsewhere. It includes his moving and insightful examinations of the p...

Since 1959, Derek Walcott has directed and written for the Trinidad Theatre Workshop. The Joker of Seville, a comedy based on Tirso de Molina's El Burlador de Sevilla, was commissioned by England's Royal Shakespeare Company. Walcott's sensitivity to the pacing, meter, and lyricism of the original makes his first attempt at adaptation an extraordinary accomplishment. O Babylon! brings life the Rastafarian sect in Jamaica, which grew during Marcus Garvey's exile to...

The three plays in this collection form a triptych--the central play, a farce, is flanked by two dramas. Together they span the last four decades of Trinidad's social and political history, beginning, in The Last Carnival, with the colonial life-style of a French Creole family faced with the emergence of the Black Power movement, and ending, in A Branch of the Blue Nile, with the conflict among members of a small theatre company in contemporary Port-of-Spain. Beef, No...

The poems in this sequence of fifty-four were written to encompass one year, from summer to summer. Their principal themes are the stasis, both stultifying and provocative, of midsummer in the tropics; the pull of the sea, family, and friendship on one whose cricumstances lead to separation; the relationship of poetry to painting; and the place of a poet between two cultures.Walcott records, with his distinctive linguistic blend of soaring imagery and plainly stated facts, the exper...

Two masterful artists—Gauguin and van Gogh—come alive in a vibrant drama about friendship, art, and madnessTwo painters—Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh—are living together in the sleepy town of Arles in 1888. Soon, Gauguin, frustrated by van Gogh's refusal to acknowledge his increasingly troubled mind, will depart for Paris. In two years, van Gogh will be dead by his own hand. In the meantime, the friends discuss their craft; they frequent a local café that van G...

In his longest and most ambitious poem, Derek Walcott reaches beyond an evocative portrayl of his native West Indies to create a moving elegy on himself and on man.The fascinating and complex matrix of the author's life is illuminated with our candor, verve, and strength. Over four thousand lines of verse are grouped into four parts. He evokes scenes of his divided childhood, in which children live in shacks while fine khaki-clothed Englishmen drink tea. He depicts the influence of ...

'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 M...

Derek Walcott was one of the most accomplished and resourceful poets who wrote in English, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992.The volume of his work in The Fortunate Traveller, which contains such poems as "Olde New England" and "Piano Practice," cements his reputation as a poet who "handles English with a closer understanding of its inner magic than most, if not any, of his contemporaries" - Robert Graves