Derek Walcott: Gros Islet

The connection between our writers and our landscapes grows even more tenuous because of the yearly migrations and the lack of publishing possibilities in the Caribbean.

And given the ecological disasters about which John Maxwell writes (http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/html/20090321T220000-0500_147936_OBS_THE_ENDURING_CURSE_OF_BAUXITE.asp) there is a poisoning of the land that makes it difficult to reconcile any sense of the sacred with the painful history of the region.

If we have learned anything from our literature, it is that nothing is inherently beautiful. If is we who create beauty and unless we decide to preserve the land as ours, the poisoning and degradation will continue.

clipped from www.google.com In his Nobel Prize address, Walcott wrote of his belief in the sacredness bestowed on places by the power vested upon them by being the settings of classic texts of Caribbean literature. He wrote of the possibility of those places made significant by our literatures turning into the loci of Caribbean nationhood and identity:

Photo: Repeating Islands Blog