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Tributes to Derek Walcott, 1930-2017: In Various Light. Eric Doumerc, Helen Goethals (eds.). Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2022, 235 p.

Kerry-Jane Wallart
Bibliographical reference

Tributes to Derek Walcott, 1930-2017: In Various Light. Eric Doumerc, Helen Goethals (eds.). Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, ISBN 9781527584013, 235 p.

Editor's notes

Index nominum
Paul Breslin, Stewart Brown, Fred D’Aguiar, Eric Doumerc, Kwame Dawes, Maria Cristina Fumagalli, Lorna Goodison, Will Harris, D. ‘Jackie’ Hinkson, Cynthia James, Florence Labaune-Demeule, Albert Laveau, John Robert Lee, Antonia McDonald, Roy McFarlane, Glyn Maxwell, Concepción Mengíbar, Pamela Mordecai, Rex Nettleford, Geoffrey Philip, Ezra Pound, George Seferis, Olive Senior, Stephanos Stephanides, Mervyn Taylor, John Thieme, Derek Walcott

Full text

1Generously dedicated “To Caribbean makers past, present and to come,” this volume of Tributes to Derek Walcott combines eulogy, elegy, literary analysis and a wholesome reshuffling of academic practices. Indeed, each of the four parts (“Inheritance,” “Other Arts,” “Not vassals but princes,” and “Legacy”) alternates scholarly chapters, personal contributions by friends of Derek Walcott, and creative writing. Such hybridity in form is confirmed at every turn of the page, starting with the quotes which open the outline for each of the four parts in the Table of Contents. In ways that may not be aligned with the readerly expectations around tributes paid to a Nobel Prize laureate a few years after his death, but which fully echo Walcott’s own artistic practice, this edited collection of scholarly and literary contributions makes for a major contribution in the field of Caribbean poetry and culture.

2Helen Goethals’s short and excellent “introductory essay,” as it is designated, signposts the genesis and aims of the volume. In March 2020, Eric Doumerc and herself had sent an invitation to a number of future contributors, who were informed that they “could write on any aspect of the man or the work that moved them and in any form they liked” (8). She tallies up the production ensuing from such an initiative: 17 poems, 8 essays, 6 memoirs, some of them original, some “retrieved from previous work” (9).

3Summarizing the 32 pieces included, in addition to the introduction, would require a larger scope than what is possible here, and every single one of them will prove useful to Walcott scholars but also to students and teachers specializing in postcolonial literature, especially its Caribbean element. Texts can, however, be grouped. Kwame Dawes, John Thieme, Paul Breslin, Lorna Goodison, Eric Doumerc, Glyn Maxwell, Will Harris, Fred D’Aguiar, John Robert Lee and Mervyn Taylor have all contributed poetic texts of varying form and length, and Taylor movingly delivers two texts written on the very day, and on the following day, of Walcott’s death. While some of these poets are known or even well known as such, others have rather made a name for themselves as Walcott scholars; it is striking to hear how they have visibly also learnt their trade by reading this particular poet. The poems presented are vastly different but share the generosity of sharing moments and dedicating poetry which the Saint Lucian writer had steadfastly manifested. Some of them recall past times, including, in the case of Breslin, a 2006 Paris conference which some of the readers will remember or have been told about. Lorna Goodison recalls having been read early on in her career by him, and comforted in her calling, while Mervyn Taylor indicates that he had sent Walcott some texts a small week before his death. All of these poems will be of interest to the reader of anglophone literature but the poem entitled “Derek Walcott”, written by Fred D’Aguiar, might resonate particularly long after this publication for the ways in which he collapses two Caribbean childhoods, his and Walcott’s, to evoke the atmosphere of games, heat and corner shops “From the tenement yard” (195).

4Other contributions are composed as prose reveries, reflections, essays or autobiographical texts which testify to their authors’ relation with the poet but also his works. These have been authored by Stephanos Stephanides, Roy McFarlane, D. ‘Jackie’ Hinkson (who also includes a watercolour and an ipad-produced drawing of Pigeon Island), Concepción Mengíbar, Mervyn Taylor, Geoffrey Philip, Stewart Brown, Paul Breslin. Again, the length, form, and perspective vary and play with an array of literary conventions. Roy McFarlane, whose own work appears tangential to that of Walcott, pinpoints how it took him years to understand how “beneath the bright wordplay is sad and worn wisdom” (81). From another corner of Europe, Mengíbar retraces the heretofore overlooked connection between the Saint Lucian poet and Spain and narrates in great details the preparations and process which led to a tour of The Odyssey (with Albert Laveau in the cast) in Italy and in Spain, in 2005. Taken together, this chorus of voices brings to the fore the nomadic ways of Walcott as well as his unrelenting attachment to his native Saint Lucia, where he was buried after a state funeral in the Castries Cathedral, a stone’s throw only from his birth place.

5There are also seven chapters which tend to resemble academic pieces, and whose creativity, within that framework, is distinct and probably attuned to the rest of the contributions. Prominent specialists are convoked, each in their respective fields. Ben Gregson’s reflections articulate Derek Walcott’s poetry with that of George Seferis and Ezra Pound. Eric Doumerc recapitulates the connections and circulations between metaphysical poetry and Walcott’s poem In a Green Night. Florence Labaune-Demeule focuses on the early poetry and its journey “from division to hybridity.” Maria Cristina Fumagalli contributes a chapter to the area of Walcottian scholarship that she has long mapped out with particular expertise: that of the influence of the visual arts. Another expertise, that of Walcott’s major contribution to Caribbean drama, is brought in by Bruce King, as he traces the “inheritance and legacy” of the Saint Lucian playwright. Antonia McDonald’s own chapter is one which reads the last collection of poetry, White Egrets (2010), not as the lament over loss and ageing which it has often been identified with, but as a pronouncement against the devastation of the tourism industry in Saint Lucia, and the Greater Caribbean; she sees an insightful “connection between Walcott’s failed muse and environmental degradation” (197), one which is mostly huddled in and around Gros Islet, where Walcott lived his final years in a house full of books, light, and of friends and relatives.

  • 1 For the Geography of a Soul: Emerging Perspectives on Kamau Brathwaite. Ed. Timothy J. Reiss. Trent (...)

6It is not impossible that this volume was inspired by the creativity and hybridity of a previous collection of texts entitled For the Geography of a Soul, Emerging Perspectives on Kamau Brathwaite,1 where scholarly contributions had also neighboured poems written by Olive Senior, Pamela Mordecai or Cynthia James, “personal commentaries” by Rex Nettleford. Lorna Goodison is a contributor to both volumes, which render in various but similar ways the porousness of borders between creative writing, autobiographical interventions and academic practices which characterizes the Caribbean artistic scene. All in all, this volume makes for a moving tribute paid to a major poet, playwright and water painter. It also performs a continuity among fellow Caribbeanists, among friends and acquaintances. The free and experimental choices which have been made editorially can perhaps show the path towards more inclusive and creative ways of envisaging scholarship.

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Notes

1 For the Geography of a Soul: Emerging Perspectives on Kamau Brathwaite. Ed. Timothy J. Reiss. Trenton: Africa World Press, 2001.

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References

Electronic reference

Kerry-Jane Wallart, Tributes to Derek Walcott, 1930-2017: In Various Light. Eric Doumerc, Helen Goethals (eds.). Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2022, 235 p.Caliban [Online], 71-72 | 2024, Online since 20 August 2024, connection on 14 May 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/caliban/13407; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/12dmy

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About the author

Kerry-Jane Wallart

Université d’Orléans

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Copyright

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The text only may be used under licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.

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