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The greatest living poet and the greatest living writer in English (and each has a Nobel Prize to show for it) have made no secret of the fact that they absolutely loathe each other. Now St Lucia-based poet Derek Walcott fires his latest barb at bete noire, V.S. Naipaul in a stingingly funny poem, The Mongoose which premiered at a literary festival in Jamaica recently. (‘I have been bitten, I must avoid infection/Or else I will be as dead as Naipaul’s fiction.’) Daniel Trilling has the story in The Observer

Well into their seventies and with a Nobel Prize apiece, they are the elder statesmen of world literature: one is acclaimed as the greatest living English-language poet, whose best-known work is a narrative epic, Omeros, based on Homer’s Odyssey; the other is a similarly fêted novelist and travel writer.

But last week the St Lucia poet Derek Walcott used his talent in the pursuit of less lofty ideals as he reignited a simmering row with VS Naipaul by unveiling a stinging attack on the author – in verse.

Walcott’s new poem, The Mongoose, is a fast-paced, savagely humorous demolition of Naipaul’s work and personality that begins with the opening salvo: ‘I have been bitten, I must avoid infection/Or else I’ll be as dead as Naipaul’s fiction.’ It was premiered at the Calabash Literary Festival in Jamaica.

Telling the audience, ‘I think you’ll recognise Mr Naipaul … I’m going to be nasty’, Walcott launched into The Mongoose amid a hubbub of surprised gasps and nervous laughter from the crowd.

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