Derek Walcott

Poet, playwright and theatre director

Head and shoulders of a man with dark skin tone wearing shirt and tie, standing against a wall Derek Walcott, by Horace Ové, 2003, NPG x126732, © Horace Ové / National Portrait Gallery, London

Caribbean poet, playwright and theatre director. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, collections include The Castaway and White Egrets.

... Night was fanning its coalpot from one catching star ...

From ‘Omeros’ Ch.LXIV in Omeros (London: Faber & Faber, 1990)

And when a wind shook in the limes I heard
What Kipling heard; the death of a great empire, the abuse
Of ignorance by Bible and by sword.

From ‘Ruins of a Great House’ in Selected Poems (London: Faber & Faber, 2007)