Remembering Walcott

I had never met him though there were two possible encounters when I could have had. One was in Trinidad during my Sixth Form days at Trinity College, then at Melbourne and Duke Streets, now in Moka. My principal, Peter Helps, had asked me to form an Arts Society at the school One day Helps suggested that I get Walcott to address us. I wrote Walcott, then visited the Trinidad Guardian where he worked but I never got to see him and he never replied to my adolescent letter.

The other time was much later in St Lucia where I spotted him sitting by himself. But I did not have the courage to speak with him.

Nonetheless from my days as a schoolboy I held him in the highest regard. I went to his plays and musicals. Dream on Monkey Mountain (I saw it more than once) was really impressive. I went to see The Joker of Seville and Steel much later.

The Joker of Seville was important because as a student we had to do Tirso de Molina’s El Burlador de Sevilla for Advanced Level. I saw his production of Jean Genet’s The Blacks at Bretton Hall. I witnessed the Trinidad Theatre Workshop’s staging of Eric Roach’s Belle Fanto. I read his poetry. And I read his articles in the Trinidad Guardian.

Walcott and others like Edgar Mittelholzer, Martin Carter, Edgar Kamau Braithwaite, George Lamming Vidia Naipaul, Samuel Selvon were just a few of the many influences that moulded our consciousness before we were granted independence. They offered insights about who we were and where we were heading.

Without prejudice to the current system of education, we should consider that it is necessary to ground young people with books and other works by these classic writers. This is necessary even as we applaud events like the Bocas Lit Fest which highlight contemporary works.

TT should have a proper memorial for Walcott, using all media, radio, TV and press, as well as social media.

Young (and older) people should read Walcott’s Laventille, as harsh as it is, because in his mind, “To go downhill from here was to ascend.” His 1992 Nobel lecture speech, “The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory,” should be analysed and made required reading. The inspiration for that speech came after he saw Ramleela performed in Felicity in central Trinidad.

He said, “Here in Trinidad I had discovered that one of the greatest epics of the world was seasonally performed, not with that desperate resignation of preserving a culture, but with an openness of belief that was as steady as the wind bending the cane lances of the Caroni plain.” Walcott added, “Deprived of their original language, the captured and indentured tribes create their own, accreting and secreting fragments of an old, an epic vocabulary, from Asia and from Africa, but to an ancestral, an ecstatic rhythm in the blood that cannot be subdued by slavery or indenture, while nouns are renamed and the given names of places accepted like Felicity Village or Choiseul.” I and my family pray that he rests in peace.

Aiyegoro Ome Mt Lambert