Nobel Prize-winning writers would almost certainly baulk at the faintest idea that they might work to a "mission statement". But when St Lucian poet Derek Walcott wrote, "I seek/ As climate seeks its style, to write/ Verse crisp as sand, clear as sunlight/ Cold as the curled wave, ordinary/ As a tumbler of island water," in his breakthrough 1962 collection In A Green Night, it served as quite the introduction to what would be become a peerless body of work.
Here in these five simple lines were the motivations, aspirations and interests of a 32-year-old imbued with a profound love of his Caribbean island, its rhythms, language, symbolisms and connections with the ocean. As he would go on to write: “for what else is there/ but books, books and the sea”.
Thirty years later, when Walcott – who died on Friday – became a Nobel laureate, the committee described his work as “a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment”. Walcott had more than achieved what he had set out to do.
The Nobel committee also noted that “West Indian culture has found its great poet”, but Walcott’s influence and critical acclaim reached well beyond the sun-kissed shores of the Caribbean, even if he saw chronicling a place with “unfinished associations” – slavery and indenture, effectively – as key to his work.
There was something rather moving about the director of one of the region’s biggest literature festivals, says Marina Salandy-Brown, noting this weekend that he had “proved beyond doubt that English is the property of no single nation or culture”.
That was Walcott’s real achievement: he could marvel at the Caribbean’s constant capacity for renewal, but through verse steeped in myth, folklore and metaphor, make global connections and comments on colonialism, history, landscape and love. The work of the great writers – Chaucer, Yeats, Shakespeare, Dante – was channelled and shaped. And all of this was achieved with a clear-eyed sense of the power, adaptability and magic of language – he often switched between patois and English.
Flick through the collections that would follow In a Green Night in the 1960s and 1970s and there's a rare commitment to both metaphor and realism. The Castaway (1969) responded to Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and the continued effects of colonisation. The Gulf (1970) sees The Gulf of Mexico, which separates St Lucia from the United States, as a cipher for the juxtaposition of Walcott's feelings about the wider world and his homeland, his adult life and his childhood. But it's also a comment on the social divides wracking America: "The Gulf, your gulf is daily widening."
It's not altogether surprising that it was often said of Walcott that he had a painter's eye, building layer upon layer of imagery to a thrilling crescendo – he did after all train as an artist. And perhaps, for the uninitiated, his major exhibition is the 600-page collection edited by Glynn Maxwell in 2014. The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948-2013 gathers together a staggering 65 years worth of his work, revelling in the full range of his palette.
It doesn't, however, include what many consider to be his masterwork: 1990's Omeros. Given it's a 64-chapter epic poem, it's perhaps not such a shocking omission, but this reworking of Homer's Odyssey set in St Lucia is a neat summation of all of Walcott's concerns; marrying the classical with the native, the historical with the contemporary.
Such references to the classical texts sometimes caused Walcott problems; some political Caribbean poets suggested that such fidelity to tradition was too colonialist – although Walcott was typically belligerent in his response. Talking to The Guardian in 2008, he said any artist must make maximum use of the resources of tradition. "The biggest absurdity would be: 'Don't read Shakespeare because he was white," he argued.
And even if the generations of Caribbean writers that have followed his success weren’t recognisably Walcottian in their style, the fact that he encouraged written expression in any form was enough. True, some of his writing for theatre was patchy. But it was St Kitts born author and playwright Caryl Phillips who grasped what Walcott’s legacy might be for writers emerging from a colonial context.
“Walcott knows full well that history gives weight to literature and rescues language from becoming merely descriptive or decorative,” he said.
Yet Walcott refused to rest on his laurels. White Egrets, his quite incredible collection exploring death, mortality and a life lived, was published in 2010, when Walcott was 80.
A year later, it had won poetry’s biggest award, the TS Eliot prize, chair of judges Anne Stevenson calling it “moving and technically flawless … this collection was the yardstick by which all others were to be measured. These are beautiful lines; beautiful poetry”.
In one section, Walcott considers the moment of his own death, when “my shadow passes into a green thicket of oblivion”. But with his timeless poetry. Derek Walcott will never pass into oblivion.
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Born November 11, 1948
Education: BA, English Language and Literature, Cairo University
Family: Four brothers, seven sisters, two daughters, 42 and 39, two sons, 43 and 35, and 15 grandchildren
Hobbies: Reading and traveling
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Wicked
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End of free parking
- paid-for parking will be rolled across Abu Dhabi island on August 18
- drivers will have three working weeks leeway before fines are issued
- areas that are currently free to park - around Sheikh Zayed Bridge, Maqta Bridge, Mussaffah Bridge and the Corniche - will now require a ticket
- villa residents will need a permit to park outside their home. One vehicle is Dh800 and a second is Dh1,200.
- The penalty for failing to pay for a ticket after 10 minutes will be Dh200
- Parking on a patch of sand will incur a fine of Dh300
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T20 WORLD CUP
2024: US and West Indies; 2026: India and Sri Lanka; 2028: Australia and New Zealand; 2030: England, Ireland and Scotland
ODI WORLD CUP
2027: South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia; 2031: India and
Bangladesh
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2025: Pakistan; 2029: India
