Arena

An interview with the poet who last December won the Nobel prize for literature, and whose current novel-length poem has caused him to be dubbed the "Homer of the Caribbean". He talks to Stuart Hall on the Caribbean island of St Lucia where he was born about how his family, the people of St Lucia and the physical beauty of the island have inspired a brilliant career as poet and playwright spanning more than 40 years. With Europe's current political and ethnic turmoil, the Caribbean mixture of cultures, religions and peoples are, for Walcott, a positive example. He reads from Omeros, which reflects the lives of the St Lucian fishermen today as well as the island's colonial history through the adventures of the mythical characters of classical Greece described in the Odyssey.