Derek Walcott has, at the age of 87 and on Saint Lucia, has died.
Only recently I have realised how important a poet Walcott has been to me.
Walcott's personal epic poem Omeros summoned my attention well before by dissertation tutor could point out it's brilliance. Even once being aware at that late stage I would have given it more than a passing look judging by his shorter previous poems for my tutor, with his brilliant literate mind, devoted much of his time to that Nobel Laureate.
My encounter with Walcott started long ago, though only have I recently known it, with his poem Love After Love, one of the few poems I discussed at length with my three, equally brilliant, Secondary School English teachers at a exam revision workshop where I was the only attendee.
Since then I have had his Selected Poems and have enormously enjoyed his poem about heroines in literature, then also dabbled with his version of the tale of Odysseus set in his own island, which is as much about his equality to The Western Canon as it is about Jamaica.
He was deeply lyrical, deeply intellectual and a sheer passionate titan of Literature, as recognised by the Swedish Academy in 1992 with his Nobel Prize.
Author of a surprising amount of theatrical work as poetry, of which I have yet to see a production. I hope dearly that I will be granted that chance.
