All but two of the ten poems in The Star-Apple Kingdom are set in the Caribbean, and in one of the two that are not, setting is insignificant. By contrast, although the vast majority of the poems in The Fortunate Traveller are also set in the Caribbean, the book makes a point of calling attention to the fact that some of the poems engage with places abroad, more particularly with Europe and the USA. The poems are grouped in three sections, ‘North’, ‘South’ and ‘North’. This structure points up the notion that it is in the relationship between them, the relationship of difference in the first place, that each of the two poles has meaning. The topical North–South divide, at levels including but going beyond the strictly political, becomes a purposive concern in Walcott's poetry, one that involves the negotiating of identity.

The shuttling between South and North also occurs in Midsummer, but less systematically and ‘announcedly’ than in The Fortunate Traveller. The process mutates in The Arkansas Testament into the arrangement of the poems into two groups captioned ‘Here’ and ‘Elsewhere’, the former corresponding to ‘South’ and the latter to ‘North’. However, the polarities continually deconstruct themselves. For instance, at a relatively superficial level, the grouping of poems under ‘North’ and ‘South’ is not so neat and definitive as ostensibly appears.