The Imagery of Nature in Derek Walcott's Poetry

Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2,2, University of Frankfurt (Main) (IEAS), course: Poetry from Somewhere Else, language: English, abstract: The paper is about the imagery of nature in Derek Walcott¿s poetry. When reading Walcott's poetry or on closer examination of his paintings one can identify that there are symbols and metaphors that are often repeated in his works: naturalistic phenomena, such as different plants and their botanical and scientific correct names or the deep blue sea and sky and other symbols of nature. In his poems Sir Derek Alton Walcott used the imagery of nature to connect to his Caribbean heritage, to describe his own problems and experiences during child- and adulthood, and to emphasize the facets of traveling.

Sir Derek Alton Walcott, who was often referred to as Derek Walcott (he also signed with this form), was born in 1930 in Castries, St. Lucia and died at his home in Cap Estate, St. Lucia in 2017. Walcott was a well-known Caribbean poet, playwright and painter who also received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1992 among other literary prizes and nominations. He also had teaching positions at Boston, Columbia, Rutgers and Yale.

Throughout his career he received many literary awards, often for his epic poem collections, taught and served as a professor at different universities such as the University of Alberta (Canada) and the University of Essex (England) or the Boston University and occasionally painted excellent art works with water colors during his free time. Derek Walcott's father, Warwick Walcott, who died when the poet and his twin brother were not more than one year old, may have passed on some of his talent to his son: The artifacts he bequeathed to his family were books and paintings. The loss of the father at such an early age and his missing while growing up and developing to a young matured man is mirrored in many of Walcott's literary works. Walcott's mother, Alix Maarlin Walcott, who was a teacher and run a school, enabled her son to publish his first collection of poems by paying a fee to send the script to Trinidad (just a few years after he had published his first single and religious poem at age 14 in a newspaper) at age 19.