Derek Walcott - Böcker

In this lyrical new work, 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 "Moon-Child", 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 either of her three sons can get the Devil to feel anger and human weakness, they will win the right to the rest of their days in wealth and peace. In a fable that spans from St. Lucia's verdant forests to an explosive ending amid its plantation homes, Walcott has crafted a masterwork rich in flowing language and colourful creole patois. With roots in Caribbean folklore and an eye toward postcolonial legacy and complex racial identities, "Moon-Child" marks a remarkable new addition to the canon of one of the world's most prolific Caribbean playwrights.

Omeros is the Greek name for Homer and though Derek Walcott's protagonists, Achille and Philoctete, are simple fishermen, they and their tribulations take on the specific gravity and resonance of their mythic Greek namesakes. Walcott's magnificent poem charts both the visible history of events and the interior, unwritten epic fashioned from the suffering of the individual in exile.'Derek Walcott has moved with gradually deepening confidence to found his own poetic domain, independent of the tradition he inherited yet not altogether orphaned from it . . . The Walcott line is still sponsored by Shakespeare and the Bible, happy to surprise by fine excess. It can be incantatory and self-entrancing . . . It can be athletic and demotic . . . It can compel us with the almost hydraulic drag of its words.' Seamus Heaney'For almost forty years his throbbing and relentless lines kept arriving in the English language like tidal waves, coagulating into an archipelago of poems without which the map of modern literature would effectively match wallpaper. He gives us more than himself or "a world"; he gives us a sense of infinity embodied in the language.' Joseph Brodsky

This is the first collection of essays and critical writings by the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature of 1992 and the Caribbean's greatest poet. Derek Walcott has long held a unique position in the world of Caribbean letters and - beyond that - in the literary consciousness of Great Britain, the United States and the rest of the world. He is one of the most accomplished poets of his generation and a profound thinker on the artistic and political questions which impinge on his mind - and ours. Among the subjects which come under his consideration in this collection are the examples of his poetic mentors and confrères, Robert Lowell, Joseph Brodsky and Seamus Heaney, and the political issues raised by the writings of his fellow-Caribbeans V.S. Naipaul and Patrick Chamoiseau. The intellectual passion and metaphorical vigour which heighten Derek Walcott's poetry are plainly apparent in his prose as well.

A magnificent, semi-autobiographical sequence from a Nobel Prize-winning poet, Tiepolo's Hound joins the quests of two Caribbean men: Camille Pissarro - a Sephardic Jew born in 1830 who leaves his native St. Thomas to become a painter in Paris - and the poet himself, who longs to rediscover the detail of a painting encountered on an early visit from St. Lucia to New York. The poem is at once the spiritual biography of a great artist in self-imposed exile, a history in verse of Impressionist painting, and a memoir of the poet's desire to catch the visual world in more than words.

This new Selected Poems offers an ordered retrospective 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.'

In White Egrets, Derek Walcott treats his characteristic subjects - the Caribbean's complex colonial legacy, the Western artistic tradition, the blessings and withholdings of old Europe (Andalucia, the Mezzogiorno, Amsterdam), the unaccomodating sublime of the new world, time's cunning passages, the poet's place in all of this - with a passionate intensity and drive that recall his greatest work. Through the systolic and mesmerizing repetition of theme and imagery, Walcott carries his surf-like cadence from poem to poem, and from sequence to sequence in this celebratory and close-knit collection.

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; the trauma of growing old, of losing friends, family, one's own memory. This collection, selected by Walcott's friend the poet Glyn Maxwell, will prove as enduring as the questions, the passions, that have driven Walcott to write for more than half a century.

When Derek Walcott was awarded the Nobel Prize, he was cited for ""a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment."" The lively interviews in this collection reveal Walcott's generous and brilliant intelligence as well as his strong, forthright opinions. He discusses the craft of poetry, the status of contemporary poetry and drama, his founding of the Trinidad Theatre Workshop, and his views on a number of influential writers, including Eliot, Auden, Brodsky, Heaney, and Naipaul.Boldly speaking his mind, Walcott takes many controversial positions on a wide range of subjects, such as Caribbean and U.S. politics, literary instruction in American universities, the proper role of sound in modern poetry, and the ""ego"" apparent in contemporary American poetry, and problems of race. Whatever the subject, Walcott responds fully and candidly.

The power of theatrical performance is universal, but the style and concerns of theatre are specific to individual cultures. This volume in the Global Theatre Perspectives series presents a reconstructed ancient performance text, four one-act indigenous African plays and five modern dramas from various regions of Africa and the Caribbean Diaspora. Because these plays span centuries and are the work of artists from diverse cultures, readers can see elements that occur across time and space. Physicalized ritual, direct interaction with spectators, improvisation, music, drumming, and metaphorical animal characters help create the theatrical forms in multiple plays. Recurring themes include the establishment or challenging of political authority, the oppression or corruption of government, societal expectations based on gender, the complex and transformational nature of identity, and the power of dreams. Though each play is its own unique entity, reading them together allows readers to explore what theatrical elements and cultural concerns are perhaps essentially African. The Caribbean plays add further perspective to the questions of what values, theatrical and societal, are part of African drama, how these have influenced the Caribbean aesthetic, and what the relationships are between the old and new world. Among the creators of the pieces are two Nobel Laureates, those who have been exiled or jailed for the political nature of their work, and the author of his country’s first constitution. The volume can serve as the primary text for an intensive semester-long investigation of African drama and culture. But it is also possible to use this volume along with others in the series as texts for a single course on drama from around the world. The global perspectives approach, letting works from ancient, indigenous, and modern times resonate with each other, encourages thinking across boundaries and connective human understanding.

The power of theatrical performance is universal, but the style and concerns of theatre are specific to individual cultures. This volume in the Global Theatre Perspectives series presents a reconstructed ancient performance text, four one-act indigenous African plays and five modern dramas from various regions of Africa and the Caribbean Diaspora. Because these plays span centuries and are the work of artists from diverse cultures, readers can see elements that occur across time and space. Physicalized ritual, direct interaction with spectators, improvisation, music, drumming, and metaphorical animal characters help create the theatrical forms in multiple plays. Recurring themes include the establishment or challenging of political authority, the oppression or corruption of government, societal expectations based on gender, the complex and transformational nature of identity, and the power of dreams. Though each play is its own unique entity, reading them together allows readers to explore what theatrical elements and cultural concerns are perhaps essentially African. The Caribbean plays add further perspective to the questions of what values, theatrical and societal, are part of African drama, how these have influenced the Caribbean aesthetic, and what the relationships are between the old and new world. Among the creators of the pieces are two Nobel Laureates, those who have been exiled or jailed for the political nature of their work, and the author of his country’s first constitution. The volume can serve as the primary text for an intensive semester-long investigation of African drama and culture. But it is also possible to use this volume along with others in the series as texts for a single course on drama from around the world. The global perspectives approach, letting works from ancient, indigenous, and modern times resonate with each other, encourages thinking across boundaries and connective human understanding.