"Sitting with him in St. Lucia, I once asked Derek Walcott if he missed New York City. He looked up and stared intently, and then, almost imperceptibly, he nodded. The truth is, my question was imprecise and badly formed. I should have asked him if he missed the New York of the Seventies, and his association with Joe Papp and the New York Shakespeare Festival? Or did he miss the New York of the early Eighties, when he was teaching at both NYU and Columbia University? Or did he miss the New York of the Nineties, when he lived in the West Village and found himself flying all over the world as a newly lauded Nobel laureate?"
Read more on Caryl Phillips's feature of Walcott in New York here.