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What Is The Theme Of The Poem By Derek Walcott

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Abstract: The themes and issues discussed in Post-colonial poetry are much the same as in fiction. After the withdrawal of colonialism the Caribbean islands were fragmented as they had no unified history or identity. Walcott, as a Caribbean poet, created a great poetry that highlighted the themes of memory, displacement, loss of history, exile, brutality and tried to celebrate the rejected or little known aspects. Walcott as a poet represented through his poetic forms the unfortunate encounters of people and islands with alien, hostile forces. He had used iconography in his poetry and sensitively mark each aspect of his natural world from stones, rocks, trees, flowers, birds, animals, climatic changes and even the blowing of the wind and tried …show more content…

He won the 1992 Nobel Prize in literature and was the first Caribbean writer to receive it for his epic poem Omeros, which many critics take as the poet’s major achievement. In addition to it, Walcott has won many other literary awards over the course of his long career, including an Obie Award in 1971 for his play Dream on the Monkey Mountain, a Mac Arthur Foundation “genius” award, Royal society of Literature Award, the Queen's Medal for poetry, the inaugural OCM Bocas prize for Caribbean Literature and the 2011 T.S. Eliot prize for his book of poetry White …show more content…

His works reflect his attitude to history and colonialism. This is so among others, in The Arkansas Testament, particularly ‘St. Lucia's First communion’, 'White Magic', 'Oceano Nox', 'Steam', etc. One cannot of course forget to refer to Omeros, his great epic poem in which he has merged a profound reverie upon his remote birth place (St. Lucia) – its people, landscape and its history. Walcott doesn't disown the past and the torture of the colonizers is still fresh in his mind. Walcott as a poet can be called ‘Hybrid’ because of his mixed parentage, his religious upbringing and his choice of the English language as his medium. His both grandmothers were African and grandfathers were European. Although he hated the British culture yet he thought there is something good in it and it should be accepted. He considered English language as superior, has written both in Standard English and in West Indian dialect. He belonged to Methodist community which was later overshadowed by the Christian community and his father christened him. He uses his genetic and cultural hybridity with great subtlety. These things reveal the uniqueness of Walcott's art, the way he deliberately 'exploits' and uses his mixed

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