Nobel laureate Derek Walcott

Derek Walcott turns 80 next month and UWI will hold a four day conference to celebrate his work. The 1992 Nobel laureate has earned international recognition as a dramatist, filmmaker and journalist and can also paint.

When Nobel laureate Derek Walcott migrated to Trinidad and Tobago he was an 18-year-olf wunderkind poet with visions of becoming internationally recognised.

It wasn’t easy and he took a job at the Trinidad Guardian, becoming a literary critic of sorts, reporter and one of the bright young talents in the noisy, smoke-filled St Vincent Street newsroom in the heady 1950s.

How time flies: Derek will be 80 on January 23. The University of the West Indies (UWI) will hold what Dr Jean Antoine- Dunne describes as a “celebratory academic conference” in his honour from January 12-15 at the St Augustine campus.

The conference is entitled “Interlocking Basins of a Globe” with offerings from top academics Paul Breslin, Ken Ramchand, Rhonda Cobham, Professor Emeritus Edward Baugh and Professor Emeritus Gordon Rohlehr who will examine the work of this multi-faceted artist. Walcott, of course, can also claim to be a tremendous essayist, dramatist, journalist, filmmaker and also a talented painter.

Academics have a way of being obscure and may just be grist for Walcott’s satiric mill although he can claim to be a wandering academic of sorts having lectured at several universities and is currently professor of poetry at Essex University.

He will be there not only to listen to the plaudits and the hifalutin analyses but will also read selections from his works

There will also be the showing of several of his films, The Haytian Earth, The Rig and The Saddhu and panellists will discuss topics entitled “Walcott’s Ghosts and Confreres’, “History as Muse” and Derek’s contribution to Caribbean intellectual thought.

Several months ago, there was a smear campaign involving sexual harassment allegations from 1984, when Oxford University offered him the prestigious post of Professor of Poetry. Amidst the controversy, Walcott declined the appointment.

Clarke is not content with just being an artist, he wants to build his own museum. Just wash your feet and walk in, he commands.

Top local artist Leroy Clarke is planning on building his dream artist house which will include a museum.

Never one to eschew self-praise, Clarke spoke about plans for the grand “Leroy Clarke Museum”:

“For people to say I am good I must be in the museum of modern art. To hell with the museum of modern art. I am building my own museum so when you want your children to see work that come out of here, you can come. Just wipe your feet before you come, I make demands. This is serious business,” Clarke said.

Clarke disclosed this and delved further, at a recent Craft Graduation and exhibition ceremony of the Ministry of Community Development , held at the St Johns Road Community Complex, St Augustine , where he delivered the feature address.

Clarke chastised some people for not truly knowing who they are.

He told the audience of a word that they might not be comfortable with, but it was important to them, because they condone it a lot.

According to Clarke it was “shit”.

“As a people we are threatened by it, we are mixing up the thing because we can’t find any distinction between the male and female. What is the female role? Therefore the children are imperfect. And I have news for you, the people who are most threatened are African people, because we are gullible to “shit”, “he said.

Clarke reminded the audience that African people came across to this part of the world without a compass.

“Don’t forget you came across without your own instruments, without your own language, don’t forget it. So we had a hard time. We now have a hard time having our own judgment, and appreciation.

Don’t forget knitting, painting and putting it together. And that is called; and I know that you all don’t want to hear the word because you are very Catholic and small church, you are using your own obeah,” Clark reiterated.

Clark said that certain people have succeeded in brainwashing African people:

“They have succeeded in removing your centrifugal force which you had a name for, and which they beat out you. So that when you hear the word “Africa” or when you hear anything relating to Africa you think it is evil.”