Derek Walcott’s latest collection sees him returning to many of his characteristic themes: the nature of islands and their vexed relationship with the sea, the legacy of colonialism in his native Caribbean, and the troubled cultural commerce between centre and periphery. Theo Dorgan wrote in the Irish Times ‘White Egrets … has an extraordinary luminosity, is fearless in theme and language and is aimed, straight as an arrow, at the blue bounds of eternity. I do not think even the magisterial Omeros has more scope in it, more grace or humanity, more relish in language and its powers, more redemptive clarity, simplicity, humility. This, by a large measure, is the best work Walcott has done … Out of the long stillness of a considered life in poetry comes a conclusion as unexpected as it is electric: “The perpetual ideal is astonishment”. Read this, and be astonished.’

Faber | Paperback 96 pp. |ISBN: 9780571254743