Glyn Maxwell, Lecturer in the Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies, is interviewed on The Echo Chamber on BBC Radio 4 as part of a special programme dedicated to Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott.

Glyn, who edited The Poetry Of Derek Walcott 1948-2013 published this year, spoke to presenter and fellow poet Paul Farley while in St Lucia to help celebrate Walcott’s work.

A former pupil of Walcott's at Boston University and a celebrated poet and playwright in his own right, Glyn told Farley: “The thing I am always drawn to is the sensual accuracy, which is like the sensual accuracy of Larkin, but it has got a bigger heart in a way. Larkin is beautiful, but there can be a sort of narrowness of the soul. Derek’s work is so open and never falls below that painterly accuracy of depiction - the sort of things which are hard to quantify such as the use of vowels and the use of space.”

He told Farley there is a thread which leads through Walcott’s work from his teenage years onwards: “I was struck when looking through the work how remarkably mature it was from the beginning.”

Walcott was Professor of Poetry at Essex from 2009 and his new version of Omeros will be premiered at the Lakeside Theatre as part of a special production being developed in association with Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

• Review of The Poetry Of Derek Walcott 1948-2013 on NPR website