Derek Walcott Obituary by Louis James
Derek Alton Walcott, poet, dramatist and painter, died in his home near Gros Islet, St Lucia on March 17, 2017. Although his many international awards and distinctions included the Nobel Prize for Literature, a O.B.E., and a Guggenheim Fellowship from the United States, Walcott’s unchanging loyalty remained to the small Caribbean island of his birth. The opening section of his verse autobiography, Another Life (1973), was entitled ‘The Divided Child’.