{"id":253,"date":"2013-08-21T19:23:10","date_gmt":"2013-08-21T19:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/masplayhouse.com\/blog\/?p=253"},"modified":"2013-08-22T19:25:38","modified_gmt":"2013-08-22T19:25:38","slug":"derek-walcott-a-poet-and-a-visionary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/masplayhouse.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/derek-walcott-a-poet-and-a-visionary\/","title":{"rendered":"Derek Walcott A Poet and a Visionary"},"content":{"rendered":"

He had an early sense of a vocation as a writer. In the poem “Midsummer” (1984),<\/p>\n

he wrote:
\n“Forty years gone, in my island childhood, I felt that
\nthe gift of poetry had made me one of the chosen,
\nthat all experience was kindling to the fire of the Muse.”<\/p>\n

–\u00a0Walcott<\/p>\n

At 14, Walcott published his first poem, a Miltonic, religious poem in the newspaper, The Voice of St Lucia. An English Catholic priest condemned the Methodist-inspired poem as blasphemous in a response printed in the newspaper.<\/p>\n

By 19, Walcott had self-published his two first collections with the aid of his mother, who paid for the printing: 25 Poems (1948) and Epitaph for the Young: XII Cantos (1949). He sold copies to his friends and covered the costs.
\nHe later commented,<\/p>\n

“I went to my mother and said, ‘I\u2019d like to publish a book of poems, and I think it\u2019s going to cost me two hundred dollars.’ She was just a seamstress and a schoolteacher, and I remember her being very upset because she wanted to do it. Somehow she got it\u2014a lot of money for a woman to have found on her salary. She gave it to me, and I sent off to Trinidad and had the book printed. When the books came back I would sell them to friends. I made the money back.”<\/p>\n

-Walcott<\/p>\n

For more poem please visit poem hunter<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He had an early sense of a vocation as a writer. In the poem “Midsummer” (1984), he wrote: “Forty years gone, in my island childhood, I felt that the gift of poetry had made me one of the chosen, that all experience was kindling to the fire of the Muse.” –\u00a0Walcott At 14, Walcott published his first poem, a Miltonic, religious poem in the newspaper, The Voice of St Lucia. An English Catholic priest condemned the Methodist-inspired poem as blasphemous in a response printed in the newspaper. By 19, Walcott had self-published his two first collections with the aid of his mother, who paid for the printing: 25 Poems (1948) and Epitaph for the Young: XII Cantos (1949). He sold copies to his friends and covered the costs. He later commented, “I went to my mother and said, ‘I\u2019d like to publish a book of poems, and I think it\u2019s going to cost me two hundred dollars.’ She was just a seamstress and a schoolteacher, and I remember her being very upset because she wanted to do it. Somehow she got it\u2014a lot of money for a woman to have found on her salary. She gave it to me, and I sent off to Trinidad and had the book printed. When the books came back I would sell them to friends. I made the money back.” -Walcott For more poem please visit poem hunter!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[42,48,49],"class_list":["post-253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-playwrights-of-the-week","tag-derek-walcott","tag-poem","tag-poet"],"yoast_head":"\nDerek Walcott A Poet and a Visionary - MA's Playhouse<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/masplayhouse.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/derek-walcott-a-poet-and-a-visionary\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Derek Walcott A Poet and a Visionary - MA's Playhouse\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"He had an early sense of a vocation as a writer. In the poem “Midsummer” (1984), he wrote: “Forty years gone, in my island childhood, I felt that the gift of poetry had made me one of the chosen, that all experience was kindling to the fire of the Muse.” –\u00a0Walcott At 14, Walcott published his first poem, a Miltonic, religious poem in the newspaper, The Voice of St Lucia. An English Catholic priest condemned the Methodist-inspired poem as blasphemous in a response printed in the newspaper. By 19, Walcott had self-published his two first collections with the aid of his mother, who paid for the printing: 25 Poems (1948) and Epitaph for the Young: XII Cantos (1949). He sold copies to his friends and covered the costs. He later commented, “I went to my mother and said, ‘I\u2019d like to publish a book of poems, and I think it\u2019s going to cost me two hundred dollars.’ She was just a seamstress and a schoolteacher, and I remember her being very upset because she wanted to do it. 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