Sir Derek Alton Walcott was a Saint Lucian playwright, professor and poet. He is regarded as one of the finest literary figures of the Modern era and has been bestowed with some of the biggest literary awards for his excellence. Walcott had been interested in writing poetry from an early age but he was more inclined towards painting and had even trained under Harold Simmons. However, he soon became a keen poet, who idolised Ezra Pound and T. S. Elliot, and by the time he was only 14, his first poem titled ‘Miltonic’ was published. He attended the University College of the West Indies in Jamaica and following his degree, he started working as a teacher and journalist in Trinidad. He rose to prominence with his play ‘Dream on Monkey Mountain’, which was turned into a show on the U.S television in 1970 and he went from strength to strength thereafter. His most famous work is ‘Omeros’, an epic poem published in 1990 that draws heavily from the Iliad and is regarded as his greatest work. He won ‘The Nobel Prize in Literature’ in 1992 and was also awarded the ‘T. S Elliot Prize’, for his work as a literary giant. Here are some of Walcott’s most well-known quotations and thoughts which have been excerpted from the vast sea of his writings and work. Read on the compilation of memorable quotes and thoughts by Derek Walcott.
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome.
Slowly my body grows a single sound, slowly I become a bell, an oval, disembodied vowel, I grow, an owl, an aureole, white fire
poesia "Metamorfosi, I. Luna
