Sir Derek Alton Walcott (January 1930- March 2017) was an award-winning poet from Saint Lucia; born to parents who adored poetry and art, Derek and his twin brother Roderick (a playwright) seemed destined to be creative and expressive themselves.
Sadly Derek passed away in March 2017, but he has left an extensive legacy of poetry that gained much recognition through the decades. He wrote his first poem at 14 and, with help from his mother, he self-published his works, and eventually gained a scholarship to the University College of the West Indies.
Derek Walcott remarked how his writing was influenced by T.S Eliot and Ezra Pound, and his friends and contemporaries Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. Walcott’s writing was heavily influenced by tensions and cultural themes from his post-colonial Caribbean upbringing, and these meaningful reflections brought him critical acclaim.
Award Winning Poet Derek Walcott’s Achievements:
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
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
“What’s it about?”
“Entire cities in steampunk robot form, walking across the land looking for resources! IMAGINE IT, IMAGINE THAT ON THE BIG SCREEN!” Read More
Picnic at Hanging Rock is an Australian historical fiction novel by Joan Lindsay set on 1900. The novel’s plot focuses on a group of students at an Australian girls’ boarding school who vanished without a trace at Hanging Rock, Victoria, while on a Valentine’s Day outing. The critically acclaimed novel was first published in 1967 and reprinted by Penguin in 1975.
A limited series of the novel is due to arrive on May 25th 2018, on Amazon Prime! It will star Natalie Dormer, Samara Weaving, Madeleine Madden, Lily Sullivan, Lola Bessis, Yael Stone, Anna McGahan, Sibylla Budd, Ruby Rees and Inez Curro.
Check out the trailer below.
The film has been in the works for several years but now we finally get a look at what to expect with the release of the first official trailer. The film uses motion capture technology to capture the actors’ facial expressions as well as their voices, so the main animals look somewhat similar to the actors and actresses voicing them. Read More
In various articles Danler has said that although she has some in common with the novel’s protagonist Tess, she is not based on the author: “[she] quickly became a character, and is in many ways much better and much worse at life than I was at that age”.
The adaptation of the novel will star Ella Purnell as Tess, alongside Tom Sturridge as Jake, Caitlin FitzGerald as Simone, Evan Jonigkeit as Will, Eden Epstein as Ari, Jasmine Mathews as Heather, Daniyar as Sasha, and Paul Sparks as Howard.
You can watch Sweetbitter on Starz from May 6th 2018.