Omeros | 80th Anniversary Special Edition | Derek Walcott

Omeros, named for Homer—that other chronicler of conflict and homecoming—is the Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott’s epic poem of the Atlantic. In scenes from St. Lucia, England, Massachusetts, and Lakota territory, Walcott offers history on a grand scale—replete with the horrors of colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade—as well as the interior story of private suffering and individual exile. In musical and agile lines, as unpredictable and unceasing as the sea itself, Walcott forges an Odyssey for the Americas and an enduring story of Caribbean selfhood, a work that is alive to the present and enriched by the deep, seductive rhythms of the past.

Derek Walcott (1930-2017) was born in St. Lucia, the West Indies, in 1930. His Collected Poems: 1948-1984 was published in 1986, and his subsequent works include a book-length poem, Omeros (1990); a collection of verse, The Bounty (1997); and, in an edition illustrated with his own paintings, the long poem Tiepolo's Hound (2000). His numerous plays include The Haitian Trilogy (2001) and Walker and The Ghost Dance (2002). Walcott received the Queen's Medal for Poetry in 1988 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992.