The Derek Wal­cott Fes­ti­val, to­geth­er with Ar­row­smith Press and the Boston Play­wrights’ The­atre, has an­nounced the short list of the first an­nu­al Derek Wal­cott Prize for a full-length book of po­ems pub­lished in 2019 by a liv­ing po­et who is not a US cit­i­zen. The win­ner, to be se­lect­ed by Glyn Maxwell, will be an­nounced in Ju­ly.

The prize in­cludes a US$1,000 cash award, along with a read­ing at the Boston Play­wrights’ The­atre, the pub­li­ca­tion of a lim­it­ed-edi­tion broad­side by Ar­row­smith Press, and a week-long res­i­den­cy at Derek Wal­cott’s home in ei­ther St Lu­cia or in Port-of-Spain.

The Wal­cott Fes­ti­val Com­mit­tee com­pris­es Colvin Chen, Sean Hink­son, Yvonne Web­ber, Ge­of­frey MacLean, Mar­tin Mout­tet, Wen­dell Man­war­ren, Roger Roberts, Eliz­a­beth Wal­cott-Hack­shaw and An­naWal­cott-Hardy. The Com­mit­tee has ex­pressed its prfound thanks to lead­ing spon­sors Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and the Arts, The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T (NGC), First Cit­i­zens, the Aus­tralian High Com­mis­sion (AHC) and LJ Williams. Sup­port­ing spon­sors in­clude Kapok Ho­tel, Shell, Methanex, The Massy Foun­da­tion, NH In­ter­na­tion­al (Caribbean) Lim­it­ed, Pres­tige Hold­ings, Bea­con In­sur­ance, Guardian Hold­ings Ltd, AL­NG and Pow­er­Gen.

For more in­for­ma­tion vis­it:

Derek Al­ton Wal­cott on Face­book

Ti Jean and His Broth­ers on In­sta­gram www.Derek­Wal­cott.com Askold Mel­ny­czuk at ar­row­smith­press@gmail.com

Sir Derek Al­ton Wal­cott, KC­SL, OBE, OCC (23 Jan­u­ary, 1930 – 17 March, 2017) was a Saint Lu­cian po­et and play­wright. Wal­cott was pro­fes­sor of Po­et­ry and Play­writ­ing at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty for 26 years, and re­ceived the 1992 No­bel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture. He was the Uni­ver­si­ty of Al­ber­ta’s first dis­tin­guished schol­ar in res­i­dence, where he taught grad­u­ate and un­der­grad­u­ate writ­ing cours­es. He al­so served as Pro­fes­sor of Po­et­ry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Es­sex from 2010 to 2013. His works in­clude the Home­r­ic epic po­em Omeros (1990), which many view “as Wal­cott’s ma­jor achieve­ment.” In ad­di­tion to win­ning the No­bel Prize, Wal­cott re­ceived many lit­er­ary awards over the course of his ca­reer, in­clud­ing an Obie Award in 1971 for his play Dream on Mon­key Moun­tain, a MacArthur Foun­da­tion “ge­nius” award, a Roy­al So­ci­ety of Lit­er­a­ture Award, the Queen’s Medal for Po­et­ry, the in­au­gur­al OCM Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture, the 2011 T. S. Eliot Prize for his book of po­et­ry White Egrets, and the Grif­fin Trust For Ex­cel­lence in Po­et­ry Life­time Recog­ni­tion Award in 2015.

The Derek Wal­cott Fes­ti­val in 2019 was pro­duced by Ti Jean Pro­duc­tions Lim­it­ed and fea­tured an art ex­hi­bi­tion of Derek Wal­cott’s orig­i­nal sto­ry­boards, wa­ter­colours and oil paint­ings at Medul­la art Gallery in April, as well as po­et­ry read­ings by the award-win­ning po­et and pro­fes­sor at Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty Ish­ion Hutchin­son, and Artis­tic Di­rec­tor at Boston Play­wrights’ The­atre, Kate Snod­grass.

A pan­el dis­cus­sion with Jack­ie Hink­son, Hutchin­son, Snod­grass and Wen­dell Man­war­ren that ex­plored ‘Wal­cott’s Way‘, a mul­ti-lay­ered method of cre­at­ing art, was fa­cil­i­tat­ed by Sean Hink­son, while two ful­ly sub­scribed writ­ing work­shops were al­so held by Snod­grass and Hutchin­son at the Medul­la Art Gallery. The Aus­tralian High Com­mis­sion al­so host­ed a cock­tail re­cep­tion and po­et­ry read­ing at the res­i­dence in Mo­ka, Mar­aval.

In Sep­tem­ber 2019, Derek Wal­cott’s ‘Ti Jean & His Broth­ers’, di­rect­ed by Wen­dell Man­war­ren with mu­sic by An­dre Tanker, was staged at Queen’s Hall. With a key ob­jec­tive of bring­ing the play to a younger au­di­ence, the pro­duc­ers and spon­sors were able to of­fer over 400 free tick­ets to sec­ondary school stu­dents through­out T&T. The de­mand was over­whelm­ing and an ad­di­tion­al dis­count­ed show was added to the Sep­tem­ber 2019 run along­side shows for the gen­er­al pub­lic.

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Derek Wal­cott Prize Short­list:

· T.O. Bobe, Curl (Sean Cot­ter, trans­la­tor, Wake­field Press, US)

· Ju­lia Co­pus, Girl­hood (Faber&Faber, UK)

· Dou­glas Wal­bourne-Gough, Crow Gulch (Ice­house Po­et­ry-Goose Lane Edi­tions, CA)

· Leg­na Ro­driguez Igle­sias, A Lit­tle Body Are Many Parts (Abi­gail Par­ry and Ser­a­fi­na Vick, trans­la­tors, Blood­axe, UK)

· Ade­laide Ivano­va, the ham­mer and oth­er po­ems (Rachel Long and Fran­cis­co Vil­hena, trans­la­tors, Po­et­ry Trans­la­tion Cen­ter, UK)

· Nick Laird, Feel Free (Nor­ton, USA)

· Ye Li­jun, My Moun­tain Coun­try (Fiona Sze, trans­la­tor, World Po­et­ry Books, US)

· Arvind Kir­sh­na Mehro­tra, Se­lect­ed Po­ems and Trans­la­tions (New York Re­view of Books, US)

· Kei Miller, In Near­by Bush­es (Car­canet, UK)

· Mary Noo­nan, Stone Girl (Dedalus, Ire­land)

· Roger Robin­son, A Portable Par­adise (Peepal Tree, UK)

· Karen Solie, The Caiplie Caves (Anan­si, CA)

· Ser­hiy Zhadan, What We Live For, What We Die For (Vir­lana Tkacz and Wan­da Phipps, trans­la­tors, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Press, US)