Austin Clarke's Growing up Stupid under the Union Jack, published in 1980, humorously narrates a young boy's efforts to navigate the contradictions of colonial life in Barbados.

Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney's play The Cure at Troy: a Version of Sophocles' "Philoctetes", released in 1991, centers on the Greek character Philoctetes, who also appears as Philoctete in Omeros. Heaney and Walcott, who are friends, draw from similar classical influences in these works.

George Lamming's novel In the Castle of My Skin, from 1954, depicts an aspiring artist's experiences in a village in Barbados, reminiscent of Walcott's depiction of Gros Ilet village in St. Lucia.

Rex Alan Smith's Moon of Popping Trees, published in 1981, is referenced, though not named, in Omeros. In this book, Walcott reads about Catherine Weldon and the Sioux Ghost Dance.

Irish author James Joyce's Finnegans Wake is a complex, allusive, and humorous stream-of-consciousness novel that chronicles H. C. Earwicker's experiences during a single night in Dublin.

Walcott's Collected Poems 1948-1984, published in 1986, includes several poems with classical references and themes that reappear in Omeros. This collection features the mini-epic "The Schooner Flight" from The Star-Apple Kingdom and the entirety of the autobiographical work Another Life.

Walcott's play The Odyssey, from 1993, is a more straightforward West Indian adaptation of Homer's epic tale of Odysseus' arduous journey back to Ithaca following the Trojan War.