Misha’s Reviews > The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948-2013 > Status Update

The Sea Is History - I love how this poem questions our conception of history and knowledge itself. That our idea of history rooted in books, defined by its transcription, is part of the colonial project of erasure.

“One could abandon writing / for the slow-burning signals / of the great, to be, instead, / their ideal reader, to be, ruminative, / voracious, making the love of masterpieces / superior to attempting / to repeat or outdo them, / and be the greatest reader in the world.” - Volcano

“My nerves steeled against the power of London, / I hurried home that evening, with the sense / we all have, of the crowd’s hypocrisy, / to feel my rage, turned on in self-defence, / bear mercy for the anonymity / of every self humbled by massive places, / and I, who moved against a bitter sea, / was moved by the light on Underground-bound faces.” - The Bright Field, 1976

Just straight out the gate with shattering anti-colonial poems ‘A Far Cry from Africa’ and ‘Ruins of a Great House’. So richly textured and emotional.

From A Far Cry from Africa:
“He calls courage still that native dread / Of the white peace contracted by the dead”

“I who have cursed / The drunken officer of British rule, how choose / Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?”

I’m actually reading a Faber and Faber copy of selected poems from 1948 to 2005, published in 2007. But that doesn’t exist on Goodreads so this will do.