flawless' work
Success for Nobel laureate after withdrawing from Oxford professor
election following sex harassment claims in 2009
Charlotte Higgins, chief arts writer
Tuesday January 25 2011
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/24/ts-eliot-prize-derek-walcott
In a "bumper year" for English-language poetry, Nobel laureate Derek
Walcott, who was embroiled in scandal two years ago, was tonight named
winner of the TS Eliot prize for the best new collection of poems
published in the UK or Ireland.
He took the prize against competition from an eclectic group of poets,
including fellow Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney, Iraq war veteran Brian
Turner and Sam Willetts, whose debut collection came after 10 years
lost to addiction to and recovery from heroin.
Valerie Eliot, widow of TS Eliot, awarded Walcott ?15,000 at a
ceremony at the Wallace Collection, London.
The winning collection, White Egrets, was described by the chair of
judges, poet Anne Stevenson, as "moving and technically flawless".
"It took us not very long to decide that this collection was the
yardstick by which all the others were to be measured. These are
beautiful lines; beautiful poetry," she said.
Walcott was last the subject of newspaper headlines in 2009, when he
withdrew from the election for the post of Oxford professor of poetry
after dossiers detailing allegations he had sexually harassed former
students were sent to academics.
At the time, he said the process had "degenerated into a low and
degrading attempt at character assassination". Ruth Padel, who the won
the election, denied any role in the smear campaign, but resigned
after nine days in post after admitting she had alerted journalists to
some of the harassment claims.
Both Walcott and Padel had their supporters in the affair, with the
literary world divided over which poet had been more unfairly treated;
but Stevenson denied that the episode had influenced the judges. "It
was not a consideration," she said. "Extra factors were not
considered."
She praised Walcott's technical mastery, saying: "It is a complete
book from first to last; each poem belongs completely." She added: "He
is a very great poet ? one of the finest poets writing in English."
The collection ? described by the Guardian's reviewer, Sarah Crown, as
a "superb meditation on death, grief and the passage of time" [http://
www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/mar/27/white-egrets-derek-walcott-review"
title="">"superb meditation on death, grief and the passage of time] ?
sees Walcott in elegiac mood, the egrets of the title become a
shifting metaphor ? they "stalk through the rain/ as if nothing mortal
can affect them" while his friends "are dying"; their stabbing beaks
pluck grubs as greedily as the poet's "pen's beak" searches for nouns.
According to Stevenson, the collection "sees a return to his Caribbean
setting after sojourns in England and America and he is, as it were,
blessing the world instead of complaining about it".
Also on the shortlist of 10 were collections by Simon Armitage, Fiona
Sampson, Pascale Petit, Annie Freud, John Haynes and Brian Robertson.
Stevenson said the judges could have drawn up "two or three"
shortlists in a "bumper year" for poetry "of a very high order". The
award also received eager public attention, with the Royal Festival
Hall in London packed yesterday evening for readings by the
shortlisted poets.
Born in St Lucia in 1930, Walcott won the Nobel prize for literature
in 1992. His major work is Omeros (1990), an epic poem weaving a
Caribbean setting into material from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.
The TS Eliot prize is organised by the Poetry Book Society. Poets
Bernardine Evaristo and Michael Symmons Roberts were Stevenson's
fellow judges. Last year's winner was Philip Gross for The Water
Table. Previous winners include Don Paterson, Carol Ann Duffy, Ted
Hughes, Seamus Heaney and Alice Oswald
guardian.co.uk Copyright (c) Guardian News and Media Limited. 2011
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