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This text is the result of a commission by the RSC. It shares the Homeric/Caribbean background with Walcott's epic poem "Omeros" which won the W.H. Smith Literary Award in 1990. ... Read more

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This new "Selected Poems" offers for the first time a portable and lucidly ordered retrospect of the fertile career of Derek Walcott, spanning six decades and drawing on twelve collections. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992, Walcott has, in the words of Seamus Heaney, 'moved with gradually deepening confidence to found his own poetic domain, independent of the tradition he inherited yet not altogether orphaned from it.' The new "Selected Poems", edited by Edward Baugh, provides a map of a domain that is at once parish and universe. ... Read more

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Walcott's eight collection of poems is divided into two parts -- "There," verse evoking the poet's native Carribbean, and "Elsewhere."
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Customer Reviews (1)

Scintillating and rapturous
I gave this volume to a friend who had no experience of reading poetry (since school, that is), and had asked me what sort of poems he could start with.I pointed out a couple of poems that I thought were highlights, and wished him good luck.When I met up with him a week later, he burst into excited praise for the book.He'd started on the poems I had suggested, and rapidly proceeded to read the whole collection, several times over.
I quite agree with his response - in my early 20s this was one of the books that got me excited in contemporary poets and poetry.While Walcott is not foremost an experimentalist - and he might at odd moments almost be thought a sentimentalist - his sheer joy of craft and wordsmithing is a beautiful, beautiful thing to behold.This book is one of those things that can remind you why life is worth living.It's that good. ... Read more

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Dazzling dramas on American themes from the Nobel laureate

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 at the hands of the Army and Indian agents -- into a portrait of life at a crossroads of American history.

In Walker, an opera first performed in 1992 and revised for its revival in 2001, Walcott shifts his attention east, taking for his subject David Walker, the nineteenth-century black abolitionist. In Walcott 's hands Walker becomes a classical hero for his people: a leader who is also a poet.
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Customer Reviews (1)

First Opinions
I took note of the name of Derek Walcott when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature some years back.I'm not one for poetry so I didn't go out looking for any of his books.However, while in his home island of St Lucia in the Carribean, I came across this book comprising two of his plays.The first, "Walker", was the story of a free Black man in Boston circa 1830.He is in the process of printing a pamphlet that advocates an uprising of slaves.Others try to change his mind and we get the gist of the man through these conversations.The message I got from the play is that violent methods leads to violent ends.

I got more out of the second play, "The Ghost Dance", in large part because I had coincidently just finished a book on the subject.That gave me an historical perspective that I didn't have of "Walker" (I had never heard of David Walker before).This play has a variety of characters that interact in a manner that bring insight to cultural conflicts.There are a number of relationships that fail, fall apart, or remain in unresolvable conflict.I appreciated the way the character and situations were woven together.I also appreciated that it all took place in my home state of North Dakota.It was a good, but not great, play.I couldn't help but notice Mr. Walcott's periodic use of metered rhyme in some of his dialogue.I guess it comes naturally for him.I'm glad I read these two plays but I won't be going out of my way to find more of his work.On the other hand, I WOULD like to return to St. Lucia. ... Read more

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A collection of poems by contemporary poet, Derek Walcott, whose subject is the panorama of life, landscape, culture and politics of the West Indies. ... Read more

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This anthology of poetry is selected to portray the various themes of the Caribbean. ... Read more