PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad – St. Lucian-born Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott has been awarded the US$10,000 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature as the inaugural Bocas Literature Festival ended here on Saturday night.
Walcott was cited by the judges for his “seemingly effortless flow of the language and imagery despite the poet’s stated premonitions of the loss of poetic power and inspiration.
“Walcott is still writing great poetry, lovely cadences, beautiful images,” the judges said of his work “White Egrets.
They considered the book-length poem that is divided into separate poems and is an exploration of bereavement and grief in one’s advanced years to be, “a book that tells of a period of life more usually talked at and talked about than heard from or listened to, which makes it a very important work”.
White Egrets is Walcott’s 14th book of poems.
Tiphanie Yanique, whose debut novel, “How To Escape From a Leper Colony”, won the Fiction category, while Edwidge Danticat was declared the winner of the Non-Fiction category for “Create Dangerously: the immigrant artist at work was unable to attend.
The ceremony on Saturday was attended by some of the region’s most accomplished writers. (CMC)
