Portfoloio on

Derek Walcott
• Done by:
• Te-Jean Gordon
• Damani Hayden
• Davion Marks
• Josiah Green
Background of Derek Walcott
Derek Alton Walcott was born on January 23, 1930 in Castries, Saint Lucia to
parents Warwick Walcott who was a writer himself and Alix Walcott who was
an avid lover of the arts. He also has a twin brother by the name of Roderick
Walcott who was also a writer. Even though Walcott's father passed away
only one year after he was born he still continued doing what his father
loved and would want him to do. Walcott attended the lower grades of
school in both Grenada and Saint Lucia, this is when he first started to write
poetry, but even at this young age he was already contributing articles and
reviews to both Trinidad and Jamaica. Derek went to high school at St Mary's
college in Saint Lucia and after he went to Jamaica to continue his studies at
the University of the West Indies.
Poems made by Derek
Walcott and the type of
poem
• Midsummer Tobago – Free Verse
• Coral – Love and Emotion
• Love After Love – Free Verse
• The Fist - Conflict
Summary of Love After Love

The time will come

when, with elation,
you wi l l greet yourself a rriving
a t your own door,
i n your own mirror,
a nd each will smile a t the other’s welcome,

a nd s ay, sit here. Ea t.

You wi ll love a gain the s tranger who was your s elf.
Gi ve wi ne. Give bread. Love After Love i s a poem of consolation a ddressed to a nyone who's s uffered a breakup
Gi ve back your heart or other roma ntic disappointment.
to i ts elf, to the stranger who has loved you

a l l your life, whom you i gnored

for a nother, who knows you by heart.
Ta ke down the l ove l etters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.
Si t. Feast on your l ife.
Summary of Midsummer Tobago

Broad sun-stoned beaches.

White heat.
A green river.

A bridge,
scorched yellow palms
The meaning of the poem is that time passes in an unassuming manner
regardless of how you try to hold on to it. In the poem, the speaker writes from
from the summer-sleeping house
a house he likely spent many summers in. Being back in this familiar place
drowsing through August.
reminds him of all that he had that is now gone.
Days I have held,
days I have lost,

days that outgrow, like daughters,

my harbouring arms.
Summary of The Fist

The fist clenched round my heart

loosens a little, and I gasp
brightness; but it tightens
again. When have I ever not loved
the pain of love? But this has moved
past love to mania. This has the strong
clench of the madman, this is
gripping the ledge of unreason, before
plunging howling into the abyss.
The poem speaks of the painful love or experience that
has experience that has happened. As the begins the
poem it gives off painting a vivid expression or picture in
the audiences mind “the fist clenched round my heart.”
The fist is a symbol showing power, strength, and when
he speaks of clenching his heart he creates a tone.

Hold hard then, heart. This way at least you live.

Summary of Coral

• The poem "Coral" written by Derek Walcott was spoken from a first person perspective.
The tone of this poem is identified as loving and emotional as he compares the love from
another body to nature. Derek is admiring the coral reef or the sea and comparing it's
beauty to a woman's beauty.

• This coral's hape ecohes the hand

It hollowed. Its

Immediate absence is heavy. As pumice,

As your breast in my cupped palm.

Sea-cold, its nipple rasps like sand,

Its pores, like yours, shone with salt sweat.

Bodies in absence displace their weight,

And your smooth body, like none other,

Creates an exact absence like this stoneSet on a table with a whitening rack

Of souvenirs. It dares my hand

To claim what lovers' hands have never known:

The nature of the body of another.