Irvin Desir

Irvin Desir was born in Saint Lucia in 1954, the fourth of five children. He was educated at the island’s St Mary’s College. He lived most of his life on his home island apart from time spent in Martinique and Barbados. He died in Castries, Saint Lucia, in 2024.

Much admired by Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, the poetry of Irvon Desir, a fellow Saint Lucian, was little known in his lifetime.

I came to literature and the literary life through an early love of reading, which has never waned. Derek Walcott’s verse has been a primary source of sustenance, and I admire the magnanimity of Dustin St Omaer’s murals immensely.

— Irvin Desir

He is the author of Looting Hummingbirds.