The Prodigal

"The Prodigal", Derek Walcott's new collection, is a dazzling odyssey for the twenty-first century. Beginning on America's East Coast, the poem journeys restlessly through the European continent, exploring the inheritance of the Old World upon Walcott's native St Lucia, and sees the poet wondering about his own sense of abandonment, whether to leave a place is to lose it. "The Prodigal" is a compelling steer between exile and belonging, Europe and the New World, wanderlust and the inevitable pull of home.