The Journeyman Years: Culture, society, literature, and art
During the same period in which Derek Walcott was pouring immense physical, emotional, and logistical resources into the foundation of a viable first-rate West Indian theatre company and continuing to write his inimitable poetry, he was also busy writing newspaper reviews, chiefly for the Trinidad Guardian. His prodigious reviewing activity extended far beyond those areas with which one might most readily associate his interests and convictions. As Gordon Rohlehr once presciently observed, "If one wants to see a quotidian workaday Walcott, one should go back to [his] well over five hundred articles, essays and reviews on painting, cinema, calypso, carnival, drama and literature," articles which "reveal a rich, various, witty and scrupulous intelligence in which generous humour counterpoints acerbity." These articles capture the vitality of Caribbean culture and shed additional light on the aesthetic preoccupations expressed in Walcott's essays published in journals. The editors have examined the corpus of Walcott's journalistic activity from its beginnings in 1950 to its peak in the early 1970s, and have made a generous selection of material from the Guardian, along with occasional pieces from such sources as Public Opinion (Kingston) and The Voice of St. Lucia (Castries). The articles in Volume 1 are organized as follows: Caribbean society, culture, and the arts generally; literature and society; periodicals; anglophone poetry, prose fiction, and non-fiction; African and other literatures; and the visual arts (Caribbean and beyond). The volume closes with a selection of Walcott's mis-cellaneous satirical essays. The volume editor Gordon Collier has written a searching introductory essay on a central theme - here, a critical, comparative analysis of Walcott's development as journalist against the historical background of press activity in the Caribbean, coupled with an illustrative discussion (drawing on Walcott's newspaper articles) of his attitudes towards prose fiction and poetry.
HistoryModern20th CenturyCaribbean & West IndiesLiterary CriticismCaribbean & Latin American
RELEASED2013
PUBLISHERRodopi
LENGTH542
LANGUAGEEN
Derek Alton Walcott is a Caribbean poet, playwright, writer and visual artist. Born in Castries, Saint Lucia[1], he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992. His work, which developed independently of the schools of magic realism emerging in both South America and Europe at around the time of his birth, is intensely related to the symbolism of myth and its relationship to culture. He is best known for his epic poem Omeros, an allusive, loose reworking of Homeric story and tradition into a journey within the Caribbean and beyond to the Africa, New England, the American West, Canada, and London (with frequent reference to the Greek Islands). Walcott founded the Trinidad Theatre Workshop in 1959, which has produced his plays (and others) since that time, and remains active with its Board of Directors. He also founded Boston Playwrights' Theatre at Boston University in 1981 with the hope of creating a home for new plays in Boston, Massachusetts. Walcott retired from teaching poetry and drama in the Creative Writing Department at Boston University in 2007. In fall 2009, he will commence a three year distinguished scholar in residence position at University of Alberta. He continues to give readings and lectures throughout the world. He divides his time between his home in the Caribbean and New York City. Source and more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Walcott
The Journeyman Years: Culture, society, literature, and art
During the same period in which Derek Walcott was pouring immense physical, emotional, and logistical resources into the foundation of a viable first-rate West Indian theatre company and continuing to write his inimitable poetry, he was also busy writing newspaper reviews, chiefly for the Trinidad Guardian. His prodigious reviewing activity extended far beyond those areas with which one might most readily associate his interests and convictions. As Gordon Rohlehr once presciently observed, "If one wants to see a quotidian workaday Walcott, one should go back to [his] well over five hundred articles, essays and reviews on painting, cinema, calypso, carnival, drama and literature," articles which "reveal a rich, various, witty and scrupulous intelligence in which generous humour counterpoints acerbity." These articles capture the vitality of Caribbean culture and shed additional light on the aesthetic preoccupations expressed in Walcott's essays published in journals. The editors have examined the corpus of Walcott's journalistic activity from its beginnings in 1950 to its peak in the early 1970s, and have made a generous selection of material from the Guardian, along with occasional pieces from such sources as Public Opinion (Kingston) and The Voice of St. Lucia (Castries). The articles in Volume 1 are organized as follows: Caribbean society, culture, and the arts generally; literature and society; periodicals; anglophone poetry, prose fiction, and non-fiction; African and other literatures; and the visual arts (Caribbean and beyond). The volume closes with a selection of Walcott's mis-cellaneous satirical essays. The volume editor Gordon Collier has written a searching introductory essay on a central theme - here, a critical, comparative analysis of Walcott's development as journalist against the historical background of press activity in the Caribbean, coupled with an illustrative discussion (drawing on Walcott's newspaper articles) of his attitudes towards prose fiction and poetry.
HistoryModern20th CenturyCaribbean & West IndiesLiterary CriticismCaribbean & Latin AmericanEuropeanEnglish, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
RELEASED2013
PUBLISHERRodopi
LENGTH542
LANGUAGEEN
Derek Alton Walcott is a Caribbean poet, playwright, writer and visual artist. Born in Castries, Saint Lucia[1], he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992. His work, which developed independently of the schools of magic realism emerging in both South America and Europe at around the time of his birth, is intensely related to the symbolism of myth and its relationship to culture. He is best known for his epic poem Omeros, an allusive, loose reworking of Homeric story and tradition into a journey within the Caribbean and beyond to the Africa, New England, the American West, Canada, and London (with frequent reference to the Greek Islands). Walcott founded the Trinidad Theatre Workshop in 1959, which has produced his plays (and others) since that time, and remains active with its Board of Directors. He also founded Boston Playwrights' Theatre at Boston University in 1981 with the hope of creating a home for new plays in Boston, Massachusetts. Walcott retired from teaching poetry and drama in the Creative Writing Department at Boston University in 2007. In fall 2009, he will commence a three year distinguished scholar in residence position at University of Alberta. He continues to give readings and lectures throughout the world. He divides his time between his home in the Caribbean and New York City. Source and more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Walcott
