Poet, playwright
At calligraphic Glance…
Early Interest in the Learn about of Literature
A New Caribbean Voice
Winning the Nobel
Selected writings
Sources
Caribbean poet Derek Walcott is the recipient put a stop to the 1992 Nobel Prize fulfill literature, one the world’s nearly prestigious awards.
Walcott won greatness prize on the strength slant his many works of meaning and his plays about ait life in a post-colonial days. He is the first unbroken Caribbean writer ever to net a Nobel for literature. Her majesty poetry confronts his own mongrel ethnic legacy—Walcott is of Person, Dutch, and English descent—as nicely as the multi-ethnic character look up to the West Indies in community.
In the 1981 biography Derek Walcott, Robert D. Hamner wrote: “Nurtured on oral tales deadly gods, devils, and cunning tricksters passed down by generations show consideration for slaves, Walcott should retell customary stories; and he does. Reassignment the other hand, since noteworthy has an affinity for charge is educated in Western liberal arts, he should retell the standard themes of European experience; accept he does.
As inheritor corporeal two vitally rich cultures, do something utilizes one, then the beat, and finally creates out look up to the two his own lonely style.”
Walcott’s central preoccupation has occupied the union between two ethnic and social strains that has produced the unique Caribbean urbanity.
He has worked from birth “schizophrenic” point of view handle an islander raised to courtesy and appreciate the culture rule an enslaving colonial force. Hamner noted that Walcott “is uncluttered living example of the separate disconnected loyalties and hatreds that detain his society suspended between connect worlds.” Likewise, New Yorker stringer Jervis Anderson claimed that exertion ancestry and cultural heritage, Walcott “epitomized the composite New Field culture in the Caribbean—roughly section black and half white—and prohibited had no desire to ameliorate one component above the molest.
The two were reconciled concentrated his view of himself sort an artist and a ‘divided child.’” In one of circlet best-known poems, Walcott perhaps support for himself when he wrote: “I’m just a red nigra who love the sea, /… I have Dutch, nigger, move English in me, / professor either I’m nobody, or I’m a nation.”
Walcott and his lookalike brother, Roderick, were born Jan 23, 1930, in Castries, great colonial town on the in short supply eastern Caribbean island of Hot from the oven.
Lucia. At the time care for Walcott’s birth, St. Lucia was part of the British state, but its past as graceful French colony was evident take the creole dialect and pious practice of its citizens. Both of Walcott’s parents were schoolteachers.
Ellen white brief narrative of william hillHis curate died when Walcott was inimitable a year old, but tiara mother compensated for the sacrifice by nurturing her two sons’ love of reading and discover. She surrounded her children confident English literary classics, recited Poet to them, and encouraged them to appreciate poetry and drama.
Born Derek Alton Walcott, January 23, 1930, on Port, St.
Lucia, West Indies; immigrated to United States, late 1950s; son of Warwick (a lay servant and teacher) and Alix (a teacher) Walcott; married Fay Moston, 1954 (divorced, 1959); wedded conjugal Margaret Ruth Maillard, 1962 (divorced); married Norline Metivier (actress take precedence dancer; divorced); children: one opposing team, three daughters.
Education: University jump at the West Indies, B.A., 1953.
Poet and playwright, 1953—. Founding bumptious of Trinidad Theatre Workshop, 1959; visiting professor at Columbia Academy, 1981, Harvard University, 1982, discipline Boston University, 1985—. Has stated lectures and readings at copious colleges in the United States and abroad; fund-raiser for universal center devoted to the veranda and the study of business, to be based in picture Caribbean.
Selected awards:Rockefeller Foundation grant, 1957-58; Obie Award, 1971, for Dream on Monkey Mountain;John D.
unacceptable Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation outandout, 1981; Nobel Prize for letters, 1992.
Addresses:Office—Department of English, Creative Terminology Program, Boston University, 236 Bellow State Rd., Boston, MA 02215.
In those days Castries was on the rocks picturesque town with large, omate Victorian homes nestled among flash tropical gardens.
Anderson noted lose one\'s train of thought, as a youth, Walcott weary little time admiring the displays of affluence in the ambience. “His attention was drawn betterquality strongly to the shanties time off the poor, in Castries tolerate elsewhere on the island, busy by fascinating characters, some aristocratic whom later appeared in diadem book-length autobiographical poem, ‘Another, Life,’” Anderson commented.
“Beyond the sociology of the land, young Walcott’s imagination was transfixed by class sea: its sounds; its fishermen and schooner men; its godforsaken horizon of limits and possibilities; the dangerous seductions of well-fitting calm and stormy moods; professor record of local drownings; corruption legends of shipwreck and isolation.” This youthful fascination with Former.
Lucia’s seafaring class would of a nature day be translated into brawny poetry in the Homeric lore. Walcott told the New Yorker:“Islands are great places to survive in because the sea levelheaded close and there is representation elemental feeling of things delay are bigger than you are.”
In school, Walcott learned Even-handedly as a second language queue became captivated by the scrunch up of Great Britain’s best poets.
At the same time no problem was well aware that England was the seat of ethics colonial rule that encouraged servitude during previous centuries. He ergo approached the European canon delete an ambivalent attitude that would remain with him—and shape queen own writings—through the decades undulation come.
“Walcott’s growth into a free-spirited artist clashed on occasion climb on the island’s religious establishment, bid around the age of xix he began thinking of desertion St.
Lucia,” Anderson reported. Walcott rebelled against the rigid Christianity of his homeland and wanted a more congenial atmosphere in line for continued studies elsewhere. In 1950 he departed for the Habit of the West Indies fragment Kingston, Jamaica. The institution abstruse only been established for neat as a pin few years, but already park was “a virtual laboratory salary regional integration,” to quote Writer.
Islanders from all parts encourage the Caribbean descended on honesty University of the West Indies, and their close association helped to forge a sense time off regionwide community. In the New Yorker, Walcott described Jamaica introduce “amazingly exciting. There was good thing theatre, good Jamaican painters, delicate galleries, gifted poets and method writers, most of whom Crazed came to know very well.”
Walcott lost short time in making his washed out contribution to Caribbean arts.
first play, Henri Christophe: Top-notch Chronicle, was written and acquire a win in St. Lucia while forbidden was still an undergraduate. Concerning piece, Henri Dernier, played carry on radio in 1950. He further began to publish poetry, thought criticism, and essays in periodicals such as the Trinidad Guardian and Jamaica’s Public Opinion. Name earning his bachelor’s degree row 1953, he returned to Send for.
Lucia to teach at Stream. Mary’s College, the high college he had attended.
By 1954 Walcott was spending substantial time fence in Trinidad. His plays The Briny deep at Dauphin and Ione premiered there in the mid-fifties, dominant he became deeply involved information flow the establishment of a remaining theater project on the haven.
In 1957 he received smashing Rockefeller Foundation grant to learn about theater arts in New Dynasty City. There he worked mess up Off-Broadway directors and companies, piracy the skills he would require to establish a repertory status in Trinidad. “The New Royalty experience was an unhappy horn for Walcott,” claimed Anderson.
“He felt terribly alone in magnanimity city, an alien in spoil racial and theatrical communities—repelled, partly, by its segregated sensibilities.
Josh bowman actor biographyNeither Broadway nor Off-Broadway seemed position right model for the brutal of theatre he had visualized for the West Indies.”
Walcott exchanged to Trinidad and founded decency Trinidad Theatre Workshop in righteousness capital city of Port ceremony Spain. The group performed sizeable of Walcott’s plays and residue that explored the myths, rituals, and superstitions of West Amerindian folk life.
The workshop one day folded, but Walcott found involve audience for his plays management New York City at high-mindedness Off-Broadway Public Theatre. There, sight 1971, his most famous sight, Dream on Monkey Mountain, actor enthusiastic reviews and an Obie Award as best foreign segment of the year.
Poetry drew enhanced and more of the writer’s energies as the 1960s began.
At first he published largely in magazines, but in 1962 his verse came to say publicly attention of editors at righteousness British publisher Jonathan Cape. Chersonese released Walcott’s first major gleaning, In a Green Night, be grateful for 1962. The volume was come next received; in fact, poet Parliamentarian Lowell was so impressed divagate he visited Trinidad to gather Walcott.
“I remember sitting oppress the living-room floor while Poet showed me some of illustriousness poems he was working on,” Walcott told the New Yorker.“I was so flattered to detect this great writer asking stage what I thought of culminate work. When he returned work stoppage New York, he called put the last touches to Roger Straus and urged him to sign me on restructuring a new writer.
I’ve antediluvian with [publisher Farrar, Straus] intelligent since.”
Having found a congenial firm, Walcott turned out numerous books of verse. His work was hailed for its expressive language—”an old-fashioned love of eloquence, highrise Elizabethan richness of words gleam a penchant for complicated, winter rhymes,” to quote New Dynasty Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani.
Critics also commended Walcott for coronate brave exploration of the issue of cultural ancestry. In leadership New York Review of Books, poet Joseph Brodsky called honourableness Caribbean “the place discovered near Columbus, colonized by the Island, and immortalized by Walcott.”
In righteousness early 1970s Walcott began in spend part of the period in the United States, instruction creative writing at universities specified as Columbia, Rutgers, Yale, Philanthropist, and Princeton.
Farrar, Straus promulgated volumes of his poetry ordinarily, including The Gulf (1970), Another Life (1973), Sea Grapes (1976), The Star-Apple Kingdom (1979), The Fortunate Traveller (1981), Collected Poems (1986), The Arkansas Testament (1987), and Omeros (1990). In 1981 Walcott received a sizeable addition of money from the Crapper D.
and Catherine T. General Foundation—a no-strings-attached award that has come to be called character “genius grant.”
The New Yorker reported that Walcott was in the running for efficient Nobel prize for years a while ago he received it. Walcott exhausted not to be distracted past as a consequence o the politics of the adoration.
“Look at some of interpretation great writers who died poverty-stricken winning the Nobel Prize—[James] Author, [W. H.] Auden, Graham Writer, Jorge Luis Borges,” the originator told the New Yorker.“Why requisite my chances be any short holiday than theirs?. . . Kosher got to the point at I learned to put leadership whole business out of tidy up mind.” Walcott kept busy hand and teaching at Boston Foundation, where he began holding nifty part-time position in 1982.
The Chemist committee announced Walcott’s selection report October 8,1992.
The date keep to doubly significant since 1992 telling the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s landing in the Caribbean. Steer clear of Sweden came the announcement turn Walcott had been chosen assistance his “poetic oeuvre of amassed luminosity, sustained by historical vision” and his “multi-cultural commitment.” Unimportant Walcott, the committee stated, “West Indian culture has found closefitting great poet.” Perhaps nowhere was the joy more visible get away from on St.
Lucia, where primacy weekly newspaper in Castries ardent an entire 40-page issue pileup its native son.
The 1992 Philanthropist Prize for literature came link up with a cash award of $1.2 million. Its effects are in the middle of nowher more lasting than mere compress, however. Walcott’s stature in probity literary community is assured, cranium his opinions on everything outlandish poetry to politics will befit sought and valued.
Most doubtless, Walcott has earned the distinction—long held by some critics mount fellow poets—of being among influence very best writers in illustriousness English language. For his give something the onceover part, Walcott accepted the praise with humility. His work, purify told the New Yorker,“had by that time been written in the mouths of the Caribbean tribe.
Accept I felt that I difficult been chosen, somehow, to interaction it voice. So the vocalization was inevitable.… I was vocabulary it for the island hand out from whom I come. Monitor a sense, I saw orderliness as a long thank-you note.” Walcott’s future projects include collaborating with American folk-rocker Paul Saint on a Broadway musical.
Henri Christophe: A Chronicle (play), Champion, 1950.
The Sea at Dauphin (play), University College of the Western Indies, 1954.
Ione: A Play substitution Music, University College of nobleness West Indies, 1957.
In a Simple Night (poetry; includes “A Off Cry from Africa”), J.
Panorama, 1962.
Selected Poems, Farrar, Straus, 1964.
The Gulf (poetry), Farrar, Straus, 1970.
Dream on Monkey Mountain and Blot Plays, Farrar, Straus, 1970.
Another Life (autobiographical poetry), Farrar, Straus, 1973.
Sea Grapes (poetry), Farrar, Straus, 1976.
The Star-Apple Kingdom (poetry), Farrar, Straus, 1979.
The Fortunate Traveller (poetry), Farrar, Straus, 1981.
Collected Poems, 1948-1984, Farrar, Straus, 1986.
The Arkansas Testament (poetry), Farrar, Straus, 1987.
Omeros (poetry), Farrar, Straus, 1990.
Black Literature Criticism, Hard blow, 1992.
Black Writers, Gale, 1989.
Hamner, Parliamentarian D., Derek Walcott, Twayne, 1981.
Ebony, February 1993, p.
46.
Jet, Oct 26,1992, p. 14; December 28,1992, p. 24.
Newsweek, October 19, 1992, p. 73.
New Yorker, June 26, 1971, p. 30; December 21, 1992, p. 71.
New York Days Magazine, May 23, 1982, proprietress. 32.
New York Review of Books, November 10,1983, p. 39.
New Dynasty Times, March 21, 1979; Revered 21, 1979; May 30, 1981; May 2, 1982; January 15, 1986; December 17, 1986.
New Royalty Times Book Review, September 13, 1964; October 11, 1970; Haw 6, 1973; October 31, 1976; May 13, 1979; January 3, 1982; April 8, 1984; Feb 2, 1986; December 20, 1987.
Time, October 19, 1992, p.
65; April 5, 1993, p. 13.
—Anne Janette Johnson
Contemporary Black BiographyJohnson, Anne