I was very happy to be asked to join this panel … primarily because it will allow me to head-off the critics and their assertion that I owe him a great debt as a writer; I can claim him and say, ‘Yes, indeed!’

Today, on the birthday of Derek Walcott, listen to Major Jackson discuss  Walcott’s poetry at the PEN event Resonances: Contemporary Writers on the Classics, part of the 2010 PEN World Voices Festival.