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| The House on Chaussée Road |
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I, with legs crossed along the daylight, watch
The variegated fists of clouds that gather over
The uncouth features of this, my prone island.
The prone island of St. Lucia (pronounced LOO-sha) in the Caribbean has been the source of inspiration for Nobel laureate Derek Walcott from the time he wrote the lines above at the age of 18. This small island (only 27 miles by 14 miles) has inspired a lifetime of poetry, including Omeros (1990), Walcott's book-length poem consisting of sixty-four chapters in seven books, each filled with three-line stanzas.
Walcott was born in Castries, St. Lucia, in 1930 in a small house in the middle of a growing capital. His mother, Alix Walcott, was a strong-willed woman who supported the family (which included Derek's twin brother Roderick and their older sister Pamela) after the death of her husband Warwick a year later in 1931. A teacher, Alix Walcott introduced her children to art, music, and poetry. She gave the young Derek an exercise book in which to write his poetry. Every night, she would also give him a poem to copy and imitate before going to bed, thus introducing Walcott to form, rhyme, prosody, English poetry, and Shakespeare. Walcott has credited her for his achievements, beginning with the $200 she provided (a princely sum in 1948) for the private publication of his first book Twenty Five Poems. Subsequently, both Derek and Roderick pursued careers in poetry and drama. Derek even formed the Trinidad Theatre Workshop in 1959, which has staged his numerous plays. Walcott (like his father) is also a painter; he has painted the covers of his books and the book-length poem Tiepolos Hound (2000) also includes twenty-six of his paintings.
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