Barack Obama still has time for a little poetryPresident Elect Barack Obama may be busy assembling his transition team and meeting with economic advisers to discuss healing the blighted US economy.
By Catherine Elsworth
Last Updated: 8:37PM GMT 07 Nov 2008
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| Barack Obama carries the book of poems in his right arm as he and his wife Michelle leave their daughters' school Photo: AFP/GETTY IMAGES |
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But it appears he still has time for a little poetry.
Three days after winning the presidential election, Barack Obama was spotted in Chicago carrying a book of poems by Derek Walcott, the West Indies Nobel laureate.
The Illinois senator was photographed holding the new-looking book, perhaps a gift he had just received, and reading a letter as he headed to his car with his wife, Michelle.
The 500-page volume, Collected Poems 1948-1984, is one of 20 collections by the poet, theatre director and playwright, who has also written more than 20 plays.
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| Derek Walcott was born in 1930 in the town of Castries in Saint Lucia |
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Walcott, who won the 1992 Nobel prize for Literature, is often described as the West Indies' greatest writer and intellectual. He was born in St Lucia in 1930 and is best known for his epic poem Omeros, a reworking of the story of the Odyssey in a 20th century Caribbean setting.
Collected Poems 1948-1984 includes selections from all of Walcott's previous seven books of verse, including the full text of Another Life, his 1974 autobiographical poem.
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MIDSUMMER, TOBAGO
BY DEREK WALCOTT
Broad sun-stoned beaches.
White heat.
A green river.
A bridge, scorched yellow palms from the summer-sleeping house drowsing through August.
Days I have held, days I have lost, days that outgrow, like daughters, my harbouring arms.
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