It was announced last month that Derek Walcott had won the T S Eliot Poetry Prize for 2010. He won from a shortlist of some of the very best poets writing in English including his fellow Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney. At the time, Al Creighton wrote a lovely piece on Walcott and the book of poems which won him the prize, White Egrets. Walcott is eighty but the marvellous art and craft of his poetry remains unstaled by age, an inspiration to all those who love beauty in the written word.
Recently I re-read for the umpteenth time one of Derek Walcott’s earlier books, The Star-Apple Kingdom. It is filled with great beauty. It always catches my imagination with the sudden shock of