Just a Fisherman: Derek Walcott on Omeros

Louis Bourne has lived in Madrid for many years. He recently married, and has another Rafael Alberti translation appearing in The Poetry Review (London). He currently teaches Spanish at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. (updated 2000)

Derek Walcott (1930–2017), awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992, published more than forty plays and poetry collections in his lifetime, including White Egrets (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010) and Selected Poems (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007). For twenty-seven years he was a member of AGNI ’s Advisory Board.

Louis Bourne’s interview with Walcott, “Just a Fisherman: Derek Walcott on Omeros,” appeared in AGNI 50. Walcott’s book-length poem Tiepolo’s Hound was reviewed in AGNI 52 by Diane Mehta.

Five days after Walcott’s death in March 2017, AGNI founder Askold Melnyczuk joined a conversation on the radio show On Point about the laureate’s life and poetry.

Order AGNI’s limited-edition broadside of Walcott’s “A Sea-Change.” The poem was first published in AGNI 67 and later reprinted in Harper’s and The Best American Poetry 2009.