Many whom Walcott touched through the theatre, academic spaces and via his poetry and plays were saddened to hear of his passing. Much like his life’s work, his death made international headlines.

The St Lucian Government, in a release, stated it is in discussions with the Walcott family regarding funeral arrangements and if the relations are desirous of a state funeral for him. Prime Minister Allan Chastanet in a release said, “Today is a very historical day with the passing of Sir Derek Walcott.

“He is a household name in St Lucia. When everyone speaks about excellence and describes Saint Lucia with any form of superlative, clearly the two names that stand tall is that of Sir Arthur Lewis and Sir Derek Walcott. It has become customary for us to see Sir Derek and know that he was there all the time. He made himself so available and participated in so many national events here and continued to fly the flag very high.” Chastanet added Walcott was a true Caribbean patron.

TT MOURNS In response to his passing, the TT Government through Minister of Community Development, Culture and the Arts, Dr Nyan Gadsby Dolly said, “Walcott gave us in his work a vision of ourselves as Caribbean people in a shared space, unique in the world, worthy of celebration. While we thank Walcott for the gifts he has given us, we extend our condolences to his immediate family, to his extended family in the arts, to St Lucia, and to the World.” Walcott received numerous awards through his lifetime, the Cholmondeley Award, Obie Award for best foreign Play, Officer of the Order of the British Empire, MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, the Arts Council of Wales International Writers Prize, the Nobel Prize in Literature among others.

But to TT – which honoured the playwright and poet with the Trinity Cross in 1993 – Walcott’s genius holds great significance.

He shared over 20 years of his life with TT. Having been married three times, his second marriage to Trinidadian Margaret Walcott bore two daughters, Anna Walcott- Hardy and Elizabeth Walcott- Hackshaw.

His creation and development of the Trinidad Theatre Workshop in 1959 with other notables, Errol Jones and Stanley Marshall, laid the foundation for the modern TT theatre landscape.

DEREK UNSURPASSED Albert Laveau, the theatre’s artistic director, yesterday told Newsday, “Derek’s work in Trinidad is unsurpassed starting up from the time in 1958 when he was invited to present a production on marking the start of the West Indies Federation.” He recalled Walcott’s response to a statement made by writer VS Naipaul about the failed Federation which gave birth to one of his more cited quotes, “Where nothing exists, everything was possible.” Laveau recalled he met Walcott in 1962 when he came to the Little Carib Theatre. He also recalled when TT was being shunned in the early 60s after the break-up of the federation and, “to name anything TT was the kiss of death.

Nothing made in Trinidad was considered to be of any worth.” “I remember going down in the basement when we were preparing for the play Ti-Jean and Derek had a mock-up of the programme.

“He had on top of it Trinidad Theatre Workshop and I said wow, Trinidad Theatre Workshop and he said yes I am naming it Trinidad Theatre Workshop.

Anybody have a problem with that?” Similarly, actor and musician Wendell Manwarren, said of his passing, it was a great loss to the world and particularly the region.

He said he first met him when shortly after he had won the Nobel prize. As a young actor and he was intimidated by him. But after Walcott saw his acting, he offered him his choicest roles, he said.

“He revived all of his big classic plays. Myself and a generation of new actors, singers and dancers got to be a part of that. We will always be eternally grateful for that.

It shaped us and made us better performers.”

A GENEROUS SOUL For Manwarren, his generosity and genius were one and the same.

Painter Jackie Hinkson also felt the generosity of Walcott. He, too, described Walcott’s passing as a great loss. He said he owed Walcott a great debt because he was extremely generous to him. Walcott’s writing about art contributed a great deal to the craft in TT.

“When it comes to talking and writing about art he has contributed so much since the 1960s and with such honesty and a vast knowledge of painting. That it is astonishing to me that someone who was such a brilliant writing could have had, at the same time, such an in-depth knowledge of painting and could be so willing to share that knowledge in an honest and sometimes brutal way,” he said.

For actor Nigel Scott, an early member of the Trinidad Theatre Workshop, it heartened him to hear Walcott’s passing being major headlines on all BBC news sites.

Scott described Walcott not only as a mentor and teacher but as a friend who will be deeply missed not only by him but the Caribbean he loved.

After leaving Trinidad, Walcott spent his latter years in St Lucia with partner, Sigrid Nama. He leaves to mourn daughters, Anna and Elizabeth, son, Peter and Nama. Major global news sites including the BBC, CNN and others all reported on Walcott’s passing yesterday.

BIOGRAPHY

Born: 23 January 1930 (Castries, St Lucia)

Died: 17 March 2017 (Cap Estate, St Lucia)

Both Walcott’s grandmothers were descendants of slaves. His father, a Bohemian watercolourist, died when Derek and his twin brother Roderick, were only a few years old. His mother ran the town’s Methodist school. After studying at St Mary’s College in his native island and at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, in 1953 Walcott moved to Trinidad, where he has worked as theatre and art critic.

At the age of 18, he made his debut with 25 Poems, but his breakthrough came with the collection of poems, In a Green Night (1962). In 1959, he founded the Trinidad Theatre Workshop which produced many of his early plays. For many years, he has divided his time between Trinidad, where he has his home as a writer, and taught at Boston University, where he taught literature and creative writing.

In 2010 he became Professor of Poetry at Esex University. In 2016 he became on of the first Knights of the Order of St Lucia

Awards and Honours

1969 Cholmondeley Award

1971 Obie Award for Best Foreign

Play (for Dream on Monkey Mountain)

1972 Officer of the Order of the British Empire

1981 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (“genius award”)

1988 Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry

1990 Arts Council of Wales International Writers Prize

1990 W. H. Smith Literary Award (for poetry Omeros)

1992 Nobel Prize in Literature

1993 Trinity Cross (Now known as Order of TT)

2004 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Lifetime Achievement

2008 Honorary doctorate from the University of Essex

2011 T. S. Eliot Prize (for poetry collection White Egrets)

2011 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature (for White Egrets)

2015 Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry Lifetime Recognition Award

2016 Knight Commander of the Order of Saint Lucia

(Source: Wikipedia)

Paul Marchan, a PH driver from Unity Road, Richplain, Diego Martin was shot by police while experiencing a mental breakdown at his home.

“Using the gun should be the last resort of the police…not the first,” said Purdy Augustine, a relative of Marchan. “Police have no training when it comes to this. They could have shot and wounded him. They could have called St Ann’s for help.

They could have shot him with a rubber bullet. This simply was not handled properly. He never robbed anyone or killed anyone. He was not violent, but sometimes would trip off when he doesn’t take medication.” The incident happened at about 7 pm when police received a report claiming Marchan was acting violently.

When they arrived and tried to detain him, Marchan resisted and attacked officers. Relatives’ account differed, as they said Marchan was cornered by officers and appeared confused.

When officers surrounded him, he lashed out.

Relatives confirmed that police were called to subdue him and have him transported to St Ann’s hospital, but when they arrived he locked himself in his car. Relatives suggested that the police break the window of the car to get to him. When they did, he attacked officers with a razor, and ran to his garage.

After Marchan was shot, he was taken to hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival.

Augustine told Newsday that Marchan began suffering from mental illness after his father died four years ago. His father was diagnosed with stage four cancer and died months later.

Not being able to deal with his death, Marchan turned to substance abuse, was eventually admitted to St Ann’s Psychiatric Hospital and had been in and out of that hospital.

Superintendent of the Western Division Basdeo Ramdhanie said yesterday that some police officers were trained in handling people suffering from mental illness, but could not say whether those at the scene on Thursday were trained. He said that would be determined during an investigation. Ramdhanie expressed regret over the situation and extended condolences to the family.

This US$251 million drawdown will leave a balance of US$5.44 billion (or TT$37 billion) in the HSF, and follows a 2016 Mid Year Review decision to use a mix of methods such as borrowings and drawdowns to plug an overall $16 billion Budget deficit. Finance Minister Colm Imbert told Newsday the drawdown is for an acrossthe- board partial funding of the PSIP, and not any specific project.

Saying an open announcement of the drawdown will avert undue speculation/criticism, Imbert cited the statement saying that Cabinet’s decision last Thursday was published, “in the interest of full public disclosure.” Imbert recalled that last May’s drawdown was also used to fund the PSIP deficit.

Caroni Central MP Dr Bhoe Tewarie yesterday said both HSF drawdowns total $4.2 billion, and asked how this would be repaid.

“As the country continues to experience severe revenue shortfalls as a result of depressed petroleum prices, the HSF will be carefully used by the Government to ensure the country’s financial stability,” a Finance Ministry statement said.

The statement added that Government’s first-ever drawdown of US$375 million last May had since been replenished by the HSF’s earnings of US$274 million.

“At that time (May 2016), the balance in the Fund was US$5.796 Billion, and, after the withdrawal, the balance was US$5.420 billion.

Since then the Fund has been able to recover through good management and good return on investments.

“In fact, the balance in the HSF increased from US$5.420 Billion in May 2016 to US$5.695 Billion in March 2017. In other words, between May 2016 and March 2017, the HSF recovered US$274 million.” The statement said Thursday’s drawdown leaves the HSF at US$5.44 billion, the same level just after the May drawdown.

It stated the deficit to be plugged.

“In the 2017 Budget Statement it was stated that ‘in 2017, core revenue — defined essentially as revenue from taxation, royalties and customs duties — is only projected to be of the order of $37 billion, some $20 billion less than two years ago. This leaves a fiscal gap in 2017 of over $16 billion, which must be financed by a combination of borrowings and drawdowns from the HSF and one-off sources of income, such as the sale of assets, dividends from state enterprises, repayment of past lending and so on, the Ministry stated.

The statement said both drawdowns were done in line with the HSF Act. Amid TT’s worsening debt-to-GDP ratio, Dr Tewarie said Government failed to spur development, investment, growth and diversification, resulting in a “parked up” private sector and unstimulated economy.

Alleging that Imbert ignored his query on TT’s state in last Wednesday’s Lower House debate on the Andean Development Corporation, Tewarie said details are needed of Government’s borrowing strategy, allocation of such sums and exactly how supportive is the Central Bank’s monetary policy.

The day of his death was a dark, cold day.

The signal achievement of Derek Walcott, 87, was to produce outstanding poetry. The scope of that achievement was monumental.

Here was a poet whose style encompassed all forms, all fashions.

But beneath his verse was a fierce politics. He believed in the Caribbean, he understood its unique qualities, the power – or the potential power – of its melting pot. He placed post-colonial societies back in their rightful place, near the top of human civilization.

“Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole,” Walcott famously said in his Nobel lecture upon being awarded that prize in 1992. “The glue that fits the pieces is the sealing of its original shape. It is such a love that reassembles our African and Asiatic fragments.” He continued, “And this is the exact process of the making of poetry, or what should be called not its ‘making’ but its remaking, the fragmented memory, the armature that frames the god, even the rite that surrenders it to a final pyre; the god assembled cane by cane, reed by weaving reed, line by plaited line, as the artisans of Felicity would erect his holy echo.” From his first book 25 Poems to his last Morning, Paramin, Walcott made an argument for understanding the value of our experiences.

He saw our society not in passive terms, but in active ones. If his compatriot and sometime antagonist VS Naipaul thought history had served us a bad deal, Walcott found the game was not over.

While some perceive Walcott as using Western literature to express his own views and concerns, the truth is he was actually doing something far more profound. He was saying there was no disconnect in the first place. West and East are all equal in the sea. “I was the well of the world,” he once wrote. “I wore the stars on my skin.” But this was no politician or peddler of rhetoric. Walcott was also a playwright and a painter. His contribution to regional theatre was the result of an inexhaustible belief in this art form.

Walcott was born in 1930 in Castries, Saint Lucia. His father, a watercolourist, died when Derek and his twin brother, Roderick, were only a few years old. His mother ran the town’s Methodist school.

After studying at St Mary’s College in his native island and at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, Walcott moved in 1953 to Trinidad, where he worked as theatre and art critic.

At the age of 18, he made his debut with 25 Poems, but his breakthrough came with the collection of poems, In a Green Night (1962).

In 1959, he founded the Trinidad Theatre Workshop which produced many of his early plays. Today, sadly, the fate of the TTW is unclear. After it was removed from its premises on Hart Street, Port-of- Spain, it was relocated to Belmont but may soon be in search of a new home unless it receives financial assistance.

We join the nation in expressing our condolences to Walcott’s family and to those members of the literary and artistic community who were close to him. His monument is comprised of his many books, glittering works of art that demonstrate the acuteness of his vision and his awesome talent for imagery, metaphor, rhyme and the surprise.

Even in his recent collaboration with the painter Peter Doig, he demonstrated a capacity to playfully relish in poetry’s primal relationship with art through ekphrasis.

While he will be remembered for many great poems, such as The Schooner Flight, Love After Love and The Light of the World, it was in one of his finest earliest poems, Mass Men, that Walcott set out the blueprint he was following.

Addressing the spectral image of a slave, and perhaps his reader, he wrote, “Someone must write your poems.” May he rest in peace.

“The organization has never and can never identify any tipster since such a person is anonymous,” a Crime Stoppers release stated.

Newsday understands that for a person to qualify for a reward from Crime Stoppers, people would have to call the hot line 800-TIPS and be assigned a unique number. The tips are taken anonymously and rewards are given in the same manner, where applicable.

Crime Stoppers posted a $25,000 reward for information on Joseph’s whereabouts.

She went missing on February 9th and was six days later dead in the sea. “Crime Stoppers Trinidad and Tobago has built a 17 year reputation on the assurance of anonymity and confidentiality and no such information can ever come from our organization,” the release stated.

The two were interviewed separately at different venues where they remain detained.

The woman was arrested on Wednesday morning while the man surrendered to police that night.

Police sources said that after interviewing the two they intend to interview the main suspect, a 36-year-old Sea Lots man and confront him with certain information.

According to well-placed police sources, they hope to approach Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Roger Gaspard SC sometime today to receive instructions.

Police have until Monday to lay any charge against the prime suspect after this deadline was given by a judge when the suspect’s lawyers argued a habeas corpus motion.

Three other suspects remain in custody. Police confirmed that key information has been received and it is believed investigations can be completed by this weekend.

Joseph, 22, a mother of one, was last seen alive two Thursdays ago when she left her Morvant home telling mother Paula Guy she had to attend to police business.

When Joseph failed to return home that night, Guy reported her missing to the Besson Street Police Station and the main suspect was detained for questioning.

On Wednesday, Joseph’s body was found in the sea by fishermen. An autopsy was inconclusive.

While a decision to close GHRS was taken on Thursday at Cabinet, Cuffie conceded he should have told staff beforehand and apologised for how the news was conveyed to staff.

“It was a hard decision to make and although it was only announced yesterday (Thursday) it was something we had been considering. I’d been speaking to your Chairman over that time to see how best we can make this work, if at all,” Cuffie said as he met with staff to hear their concerns.

Glum news from the Central Bank’s recent First Quarter Report — of further drops in the economy and public revenues — led to the closure decision. Cuffie urged employees to take advantage of the National Employment Service offered by the Ministry of Labour. He also promised to enact a system to help employees through this difficult period.

Cuffie added that GHRS employed some of the brightest minds so he is confident they would not remain unemployed for long.

GHRS chairman Avalaughn Huggins told staff they will be paid a gratuity, as the separation was initiated by the employer (Government).

Deputy CEO and VP (Corporate Planning) Geoffrey Lewis, invited employees to share their concerns with him via email or face-to-face.

According to reports, at about 1.30 am, the burglars used a piece of metal to break into the store on the eastern side of the building.

They removed electronic items including laptops and escaped.

Losses were put at over $60,000.

A passer-by who saw the broken window alerted the St James police, but by the time officers arrived the burglars were long gone.

Investigators were able to secure surveillance footage from CCTV cameras at the store. Yesterday head of the Western Division Senior Superintendent Basdeo Ramdhanie said the police were working on several leads and arrests were imminent. He warned the public it is an offence to purchase stolen items and added that a team of investigators were working around the clock to solve this crime.

According to reports, officers of the Northern Division led by Insp Green were on patrol in the Maloney area on Thursday at about 10.30 pm when they stopped the car with the three occupants. When they found the marijuana, the three were promptly arrested and taken to the Maloney Police Station where they remain detained.

Also in Northern Division, officers seized a sub machine gun at Wharf Trace in Maracas, St Joseph and arrested a 43-year-old man from Saddle Road, Maraval. According to reports at 5 pm, officers were on their way to the scene of an attempted murder when they searched the man’s car, allegedly found the gun and detained him.

Yesterday, Northern Division officers also carried out a marijuana eradication exercise at Wharf Trace and destroyed a quantity of grown marijuana trees. The exercise was led by Snr Supt Mc Donald Jacob.

Bobcombe is of mixed descent, standing at five feet, five inches tall, with a dark brown complexion and a slim build. She has a tattoo of a heart on her left thigh and another tattoo of the words “baby girl” on her chest.

She was last seen wearing her school uniform, which is a moss green plaid skirt and a white shirt. People with knowledge of her whereabouts are asked to call 800-TIPS or contact the police at 555, 999, 911 or any police station.