About Derek Walcott (winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1992)

map of St. Lucia

the sea-swift (a.k.a. black swift, Cypseloides niger).

a bust of Homer ("'O-meros' she laughed. 'That's what we call him in Greek,' / stroking the small bust with its boxer's broken nose" Omeros p. 14).

Winslow Homer, The Gulf Stream; in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (cf. Omeros pp. 182-4).

Augustus St. Gaudens' monument to Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts regiment; more information here and here (cf. Omeros p. 184).

Walcott speaks ("By the time you come to open the text, you say, Oh my God, I've read it before ... why should I read the whole thing?").