Giving Voice to One People’s Grief

n the 17th of March 2017, the Nobel prize-winning poet and playwright, Derek Walcott, passed away on his native island of St. Lucia. He was 87. I first encountered Walcott’s poetry a few years ago, having leafed through his final book of poetry, White Egrets, which I was to deliver to my elder sister. I was immediately struck by the fluidity of his language, and his painterly renditions, in words, of nature and its beauty. Only later would I discover that

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