Derek walcott famous works

Derek Walcott (1930-2017) was awarded the Nobel prize for Literature in 1992, two years after the publication of his most ambitious and celebrated work, Omeros, an epic poem which draws on the Homeric tradition and relocates it in the voices and lives of the people of the Caribbean.

His own experience of living in two cultures was a powerful influence on his work; he grew up on the relatively isolated island of Saint Lucia, moved to Trinidad in his twenties, and latterly spent much of his time in the USA, where he taught literature and creative writing at Boston University.

This duality brought a richness to his writing: he had deep roots in his native culture and at the same time took possession of his rightful place within the English-speaking literary tradition. As Sean O’Brien has said, “Walcott is faithful to his origins while speaking to the world”.

Much of Walcott’s work reaches out for an unattainable paradise or utopia which finds its