Morning, Paramin

A vibrant meditation on the difficult beauty of the Caribbean, taking the form of a dialogue between a Nobel Prize-winning poet and a renowned figurative painter

Morning, Paramin offers us a stunning collaboration between a Nobel Prize-winning poet, Derek Walcott, and a renowned figurative painter, Peter Doig. It journeys through the physical and psychological landscapes of two lives, from the snowy landscapes of Edmonton to the sun-washed shores of the Caribbean, from the process of mourning a loved one to the experience of watching a film. Taking the form of a call-and-response, with paintings on one side and poetry on the other, Morning, Paramin lets Walcott's characteristic perception and wit shine through in his illuminating responses to Doig's luminescent paintings. Both poems and paintings are triumphant celebrations of life's pleasures and pains--loving, observing, aging.

Walcott, born and living in St. Lucia, and Doig, living in Trinidad, engage in a powerful dialogue on the Caribbean's colonial legacy, the politics of home and belonging, and the boundaries of art. A poignant exploration of a friendship and a vibrant meditation on the difficult beauty of the Caribbean, Morning, Paramin probes the boundaries of communication and celebrates the thrills of a shared language.

Derek Walcott (1930-2017) was born in St. Lucia, the West Indies, in 1930. His Collected Poems: 1948-1984 was published in 1986, and his subsequent works include a book-length poem, Omeros (1990); a collection of verse, The Bounty (1997); and, in an edition illustrated with his own paintings, the long poem Tiepolo’s Hound (2000). His numerous plays include The Haitian Trilogy (2001) and Walker and The Ghost Dance (2002). Walcott received the Queen’s Medal for Poetry in 1988 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992.

Peter Doig, a Scottish painter born in 1959, has lived and worked in Trinidad since 2002. He was nominated for the Turner Prize and received the Prix Eliette von Karajan in 1994. He was the recipient of the Wolfgang Hahn Prize in 2008. Major solo exhibitions have been shown at the Tate Britain, the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, the National Galleries of Scotland, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, and the Fondation Beyeler.