Omeros Author:Derek Walcott A poem, in seven books, or circular narrative design. The title is the Greek name for Homer, invoked here by a Greek girl in exile in America, the invocation marking the beginning of a long journey home - through an intricate web of places and histories and associations - for the poem's characters. — Achille, the protagonist, has set out on a fi... more »shing expedition from the island of Saint Lucia when he is carried back across the centuries to his ancestral home on the West African coast. There are two currents of history in Derek Walcott's stunning new poem, his longest and most ambitious work to date; the visible history charted in events - the tribal losses of the American Indian, the tragedy of African enslavement - and the interior, unwritten epic fashioned from the suffering of the individual in exile.
Derek Walcott is the author of many plays and books of poems. He was awarded the Queen's Medal for Poetry in 1988. He lives in Saint Lucia and Boston.« less