A conversation with Derek Walcott

What is it like being in Nigeria?

This is my first trip to Africa thanks to Wole Soyinka. [The] Africa I always imagined is not a city like Lagos. It's a big sprawling city so it doesn't feel like Africa; it feels very Caribbean, which is okay. I haven't been out much, I've been in most of the time, so I really can't give an opinion, I've been in town just a few days but the people are terrific, very fine.

You say it feels more like the Caribbean, why do you think that is?

Because... a lot of obvious reasons, the people are black, they are from Africa anyway, their architecture is very similar to say, Port of Spain, parts of Lagos looks like... It could be Jamaica, could be Port of Spain, it could be my home.

Why has it taken you this long to come to the African continent?

Well, I don't remember being invited [and] I don't go where I'm not invited. I did have a couple of invitations, but the concept is a long journey. The time when I might have been invited... the idea of flying; everybody flies now but there were days when you thought: I have to fly to Africa.

I went to London and spent X number of hours to cross the Atlantic, but it's still a big deal, I'm flying tomorrow, it's going to be tiring.

How has it been since winning the Nobel Prize? How do you think it's changed you as a writer?

I hope it hasn't changed me as a writer. It has led to a lot of invitations all over the world which I take because I like to see things. And principally, that's how it's been; invitations from Japan, Sweden...

What kind of things are you writing now, what kind of things are you concerned about now in your writings?

I'm working on some screenplays now; I've been rehearsing them on video. There is a fable I did, called ‘Ti-Jean and His Brothers' that I'm trying to film. I'm very interested in films because I paint and I write and it's a proper medium for both occupations.

What do you think are the interactions or differences between painting and writing a poem?

I don't do abstract painting; I don't believe in it. I do realistic or naturalistic painting, this I find more challenging. I do a lot of portraits, landscapes as well - and I work in both oils and watercolour.

I think one immediate thing about painting is that... you can't know right away about poetry, whether the poem is good or not, it takes a little while for it to marinate. One knows immediately if a painting is good.

Do you paint as well as you write poetry?

You think I will answer that? Anyway I answer, it will sound vain. I don't associate the two things; they are not the same thing. I don't think you can be literary and be a painter. On the other hand, you can learn from painting how to look at landscape or portrait. So painting can teach more, I think, to writing - than writing can to painting.

What are your feelings about the Caribbean these days?

I'm very worried about the small islands of the Caribbean because of the tourists. It's just that they are very small; and in the case of the hotels, it is absentee ownership.

They can't own the beaches but if they buy property on the beaches and build hotels, it kind of excludes the local population, not deliberately, not illegally, but mentally it does. So I'm very scared about that.

You wrote a poem for President Obama and I thought you might use that to tell us the significance of a Black man as a president. Does it go beyond what we just see as the arrival of a Black man in the White House?

I think it was inevitable that there would be a Black president at some point. We can't ignore the presence of Black people in America; in fact Black people are Americans. I was thinking the other day of the idea of ‘Afro-American'. If I were an American and I wasn't Black I might resent it because I would say: why are you emphasising your Africanness if you were an American?

Because I don't go round saying White American. The fact that the Black man in America has had to do that is an example of how much mental repression has gone on there, so that it's a defiant statement saying I don't belong to America, I belong to Africa.

But I think that's a bad thing to say for both the Caribbean and American culture because you are where you live and what you do there is what perfects a life, your children, your future and everything.

So I'm not keen on the term anymore - ‘Afro-American' - and I think it may be superfluous now that you have a Black president to say that. I mean, it's no point in calling himself I'm an Afro-American president, he is a president. His election has done a considerable, inestimable amount of difference to the politics in America.

Is there a promise to his election that even people in places like Africa and the Caribbean should look to?

Look to him?

Yes. Is there a promise in his election as the president that goes beyond...?

If you let race dominate your thinking you are in trouble because I mean American influence is still bad, is maligned.

Culturally, it can be terrible. All of our kids are... the technical effects of the other empire which is America can be very debilitating; so to say that it will be cheering news that he can bring about will be a very difficult thing to do.

He is an American and, I mean, people should not be proud of that fact because it's a contradiction saying: I have to be proud of him because he is a Black man. Why do you have to be proud? He is like anybody else, you elected him in; that's the hard part to take in America.

Tellingly you titled the poem ‘Forty Acres' and this of course goes back to aspects of American slave history?

Well, the slave was promised 40 acres and a mule - not really; he didn't get it. One of the great f**k ups again.

Obama likes your poetry

I was very happy to see that he was carrying a book of mine. That was nice.

What do you think that says about the man?

You want me to say something pompous? ‘He's doing something he should have done a long time ago?' No, no... It's very flattering to have a reader, not because he's president, but to have any reader is flattering.

But him, because I think he's written himself. He's written poetry and he's an intelligent person. I was happy to write that poem about him not for the standard cliché reasons because he could just as easily be an idiot, because he's Black. You know what I mean? It does not have to be: he's brilliant, he's nice, he's sweet. Thank God it wasn't Idi Amin who won the election!

You had a famous spat with Naipaul...

No, I'm not talking about Naipaul.

I didn't think you would.

I'm tired, I'm tired of Naipaul.

I enjoyed the poem.

Oh, you read it? Where did you read it?

I read it in the UK Guardian.

They published it?

Yes, they published it, and the New Statesman published it.

Really?

Yes, ‘The Mongoose.'

They published it? I never saw it! So you liked it?

Yes, I had a good laugh. The event held earlier today on poverty alleviation - why was it important to come at this time to talk about the eradication of poverty?

I think Wole [Soyinka] is a very good poet and dramatist. He has written one of the masterpieces of 20th century theatre, ‘The Road.' You know ‘The Road? Masterpiece of a play, which we did in Trinidad.

And I think he rightly thinks that a conference on economics should have lots of - experts can be boring, you know - to have people who are not ignorant but who have a fresh slant on standard topics. Hunger is taken for granted as part of our experience; it's not taken for granted, I think, by a poet as opposed to an economist.

An economist as a realist will say: well, there will always be hunger - and a poet will say: why should there always be hunger? Which is illogical and inconsequential, but he still asks the question. And asking that question is more important than the fact that there will always be hunger.

How was the event for you?

I came because of Wole. I can't contribute much to a discussion by experts on economic problem. So, I didn't think that I could really make a contribution apart from something that has to do with passion, about feeling, about compassion, the passion of the situation. I mean it is very, very hard to accept famine for me and this is something you may be used to in Africa as a concept.

We may be used to it because of CNN!

I didn't say that today, but you open a fashion magazine or magazine and you will see a starving child next to a model. That's the level we accept.

Tell us a bit about your friendship or artistic relationship with Soyinka over the years.

Wole is very like a lot of writers that I know. A lot of us admire him because he's courageous. There are two qualities that are not common, they are much less common than we think: one is courage and one is honesty.

So you can get a courageous son of a b****, right? But you can get somebody who has principles and is obviously a patriot. The love that a writer or poet has for his country is deeper than the average thing somebody may profess about, ‘I love Nigeria'.

You may love Nigeria but if you get a job somewhere, you run. You get what I mean? So we are very shallow in our promises. I don't take Wole as a shallow man, but you have two terrific writers in Achebe and Wole and you had a very good poet in Okigbo. Did he die fighting in a war, was he a soldier?

Yes, he died in the Biafran War. Can you reflect on African literature?

I don't know where it's at now; I don't know a lot of African literature. I don't really read a lot of fiction, usually. I can't even keep up with Caribbean fiction now because there is a lot of publications happening, a generation of younger writers coming up that I haven't read. But I would say the young writers of today have to be better than ever because of the competitiveness of other cultures.

But as you look at Caribbean literature, it gives you a lot of hope?

Caribbean literature is pretty solid now. We have some extremely good writers we have had for some time. Like in Latin America, the same situation. You read a lot of fiction?

Yes.

Have you read this Chilean writer, Bolano?

Yes, but not much. The poetry chair at Oxford, are you very keen about it?

They asked me to and now I don't know. It's agony for me to write critical prose so I don't know why I said: Yes. I've been trying to do an essay now for the last, I don't know how long. On the other hand, it's an honour to do it and also Seamus [Heaney] has done it and Paul Muldoon has done it.

I have a couple of subjects in mind that I would like to do, I think. But everybody says that it is to get down and write it. How many unpublished novels do you have in your head?

20 or so.

You are a writer, aren't you? What do you do?

I write short stories.

Have you had a book?

Not yet. I've been published in some anthologies.

My daughter writes short stories.

What do you think of her writing?

I told her a long time ago I would break her arm but she went ahead anyway! I read the book after it was published, it's good. Good collection.

Do you see your poetry crossing over to a new generation?

Both in painting and in poetry, I'm a square.

What does that mean?

Boring, predictable, repetitive. I don't like the current state of poetry generally, especially in the states. You would think that there was no such thing as the war, the subjects that they write about. When you look at the subject of American torture, that's horrific.

Ginsberg used to write about contemporary events. Poets also do, but I don't think the American poet engages in the reality of America as an empire. As an empire, its poets don't write about that.

You think they are in denial?

It's a very, very comfortable country. If you were living in Wisconsin, who cares about Afghanistan?

Many say ‘Omeros' is your greatest work. How do you feel about it all these years down the line, and the reception of it over the years?

It's very hard to ask a writer what's his favourite book. I'm a little astonished about the fact of the book, which is a long book. But I remember having a very happy time writing it because I would get up in the morning - we were living near the beach - get up early in the morning and go straight to work as if I were going to an office. It's like writing a novel and you have to do so many phases of it. This is a long poem so I had to do so many [phases] and I enjoyed doing it.

The inclusion of Patois in your writings, was it deliberate?

Sure, because our people speak them.

But for non-speakers, how will they access it?

I don't see why I should pay attention to Pinter's Cockney and you can't pay attention to my Patois. I'm sure you would prefer the rhythm of Nigerian English, when I say that I mean...

...the Pidgin English.

Things that can come up. All languages are Pidgin until they settle down, so I enjoy it. French Creole can be extremely colourful and it's not so small; it's spoken in a lot of countries, in Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guyana, Haiti.

It must be very depressing for you, Haiti

Well, I've never been there. I know that Cubans can be allowed to enter America but Haitians, because they are Black, they are not. That's horrible.

Derek Walcott was in Nigeria last week for the Oceanic Bank's Global Leaders Forum on ‘Food Security and Poverty Alleviation', held on May 5, 2009.

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