JASMINE ERIKA L.

DO-OMA 21st CENTURY LITERATURE

11-HUMSS, ST.SERAPHIN

TITLE: OMEROS
AUTHOR: Derek Walcott
DATE PUBLISHED: 1990
GENRE: Epic poetry, World literature, Postmodernism
AUTHOR’S BACKGROUND: Walcott was born in January of 1930 in Castries,
Saint Lucia. His first poem appeared in a
newspaper when he was only fourteen. His first
collection was published five years later,
titled 25 Poems. Walcott’s career was solidified
with the publication of In a Green Night: Poems
1948-1960 in 1962. Throughout his life, he won
the Novel Prize, a MacArthur Foundation genius
award, the Queen’s Medal for Poetry, and the 2011
T.S. Eliot Prize for White Egrets. In February of
2016, he became a Knight of the Order of Saint
Lucia. His work is generally associated with
themes of spirituality, colonialism, and
Caribbean history. The work most cited by
literary scholars is Omeros, and Homeric epic
published in 1990
FOR POETRY
STRUCTURE:(LINES, Three-line form, twelve syllables, three-lined
METER, AND STANZA) stanzas.
SOUND DEVICES: Fully rhymed
LITERARY DEVICES: Personification, alliteration and assonance,
and even pararhyme at times.

Omeros is about memory, history, and identity,

THEME: and these issues are explored from both a
personal and a global perspective.

SYMBOL: The bird leads the poet to self-definition by

uniting the conquests of Achille and the "I" into
one coherent genealogical and cultural study.