Derek Walcott was born in St. Lucia in 1930. He is the author of eight collections of plays and a book of essays. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992. The poems published in this issue (as well as those in the October and November/December 2009 issues) are from his forthcoming collection of poems, White Egrets, to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in April.

• February 2010: No Opera: A new poem
• November/December 2009: I Am Astonished at the Sunflowers Spinning: A new poem
• October 2009: There Never Really Was a “We” or “Ours”: A new poem