The Schooner Flight

Derek Walcott published “The Schooner Flight” in his 1979 collection The Star-Apple Kingdom. Walcott, perhaps the most famous Caribbean writer of the 20th century, wrote this long, semi-epic persona poem after he was already established as an important poet. The poem explores the cultural and historical tensions of the Caribbean islands of Walcott’s childhood through the story of its central character, Shabine the smuggler and sailor.

Content Warning: This study guide quotes and obscures the poet’s use of the n-word. Additionally, the source material features offensive terms which are replicated in this guide only in direct quotes of the source material.

Poet Biography

Derek Walcott was born in 1930 to a schoolteacher and lover of the arts mother and a painter father in Saint Lucia. Derek Walcott had a twin brother, Roderick Walcott, who would also go on to find literary success. Walcott grew up in the Caribbean island Saint Lucia’s capital city of Castries, where he trained as a painter and studied to be a writer. Walcott published his first poem in a local newspaper at the age of 14 and paid to have his first book of poems published at 19, which he sold on street corners.

After receiving his bachelor’s degree in Jamaica, Walcott began his writing career as a critic, teacher, and journalist in Trinidad in the 1950s.