Derek Walcott

Derek Walcott, a famous Saint Lucian poet and playwright was born in 1930 near the Windward Islands in the Lesser Antilles, near the town of Castries. Raising on the remote volcanic island-once home to a British colony-had a profound impact on Walcott's life and creative output. It was rumored that his two grandparents were descended from slaves.

Derek and his twin brother Roderick were just a few years old when their father, a bohemian watercolorist, passed away. His mother ran the Methodist school in town. Following his education at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica and St. Mary's College on his home island, Walcott relocated to Trinidad in 1953 and has since worked as a theatrical and art critic. He debuted at the age of eighteen with a book of twenty-five poems, but it was the 1962 collection In a Green Night that gave him his big break. Many of his early pieces were staged by the Trinidad Theatre Workshop, which he created in 1959.

Despite his frequent travels, Walcott has always felt firmly anchored in Caribbean civilization, which is a fusion of African, Asian, and European cultures. This is evident in his efforts to build an indigenous play. He has spent many years splitting his time between Boston University, where he teaches creative writing and literature, and Trinidad, where he makes a living as a writer.

Derek Walcott: Childhood and Education

On January 23, 1930, Derek Walcott was born in Castries, Saint Lucia. An island in the West Indies is called Saint Lucia. Around the house, Walcott's mother, a creative educator, would often recite poems. When Derek Walcott, along with his twin brother Roderick Walcott, were just one year old, their painter and civil servant father passed away. Along with his brother and sister, Derek Walcott was reared by his mother. The family's African, Dutch, and English ancestry represents the Caribbean islands' colonial past.

Career

Derek's intricately metaphorical poetry takes the physical splendor of the Caribbean, the harsh legacy of colonialism, and the complexities of living as a writer in two cultural worlds. Walcott was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his work. He was eighty-seven when he died on 17 March 2017 at his home near Gros Islet in St. Lucia.

Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, his publisher, confirmed his passing. Although the publisher stated that he had been ill for some time, no reason was given.

The island of St. Lucia served as the small sun in the center of Mr. Walcott's vast universe. Rich vegetation, dazzling white beaches, and a complex multicultural legacy motivated its most well-known author to create an ambitious body of work that seemed to encompass every kind of poetry, from the brief lyric to the epic.

When the book "In a Green Night" was released in 1962, poets and critics-Robert Lowell among them-leaped to the occasion to hail Mr. Walcott's poetry for its profound sense of place, its immediate visual imagery, and its plain musicality. This marked the emergence of a potent new voice in Caribbean literature.

When he was a teenager, he self-published a book of poems that brought him initial notoriety in St. Lucia. His early work demonstrated both a painter's eye for the details of the local landscape, including its beaches and clouds, its turtles, crabs, and tropical fish, and the glittering Caribbean. He also demonstrated an outstanding ear for the music of English, as heard in the authors whose work he consumed in his Anglocentric learning and through the tongue of his friend St. Lucians.

From the collection "In a Green Night," he composed the poem "Islands."

I seek,

As climate seeks its style, to write

Verse crisp as sand, clear as sunlight,

Cold as the curled wave, ordinary

As a tumbler of island water.

In 1990, he stated to The Economist, "The sea is always present." It is constantly apparent. Every path ends there. The vibration of the water is a part of me. Furthermore, the pulse of the phrase, its metrical time, has to do with the rhythm and sound of the sea itself if you say in patois, "The boats are coming back."

The poetic voice of Mr. Walcott was not timid in the slightest. In all its sensual immediacy and nuanced historical complexity, it cried out to be heard.

"I come from a society that is not hindered by flourish; it is a rhetorical society; it is a culture of physical performance; it is a society of style. It likes grandeur and large gestures," he said to The Paris Review in 1985. "If you learned poetry where I grew up, you had to yell it out. Boys would shout it aloud, act it out, do it, and exalt it. It was not possible to duplicate that thunder or that speaking power by whispering something to someone else in a small, quiet voice.

Derek Walcott received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature back home in Saint Lucia.

Works like "The Castaway," "The Gulf," and "Another Life," a 4,000-line exploration of Mr. Walcott's life and surroundings that was released in 1973, show how his art has evolved and grown. George Lamming, a poet from the Caribbean, referred to it as "the history of an imagination."

Mr. Walcott gained immediate renown as one of the greatest English-language poets and as a highly ambitious artist who aspired to be the best for his country, his art, and himself.

Inspired by the majesty of the Caribbean, he wrote "Omeros," a transposed 300-page Homeric epic released in 1990, in which a cab driver and a group of menial fishermen replace the heroes of ancient Greece.

He was given the Nobel Prize two years later. His "poetic oeuvre with outstanding luminosity, supported by a historical vision, and the result of a multicultural commitment" was noted by the prize committee.

The statement went on: "Walcott communicates to all of us through his literary works, which chart a course for his unique cultural milieu. West Indian culture has discovered its great poet in him."

As a poet, Mr. Walcott explored the identity ambiguities that were inherent to his circumstances. He was a poet of mixed race who lived on an island under British rule where the locals spoke English or French-based Creole.

In his first collection of poems to be produced outside of St. Lucia, "In a Green Night," which includes "A Far Cry From Africa," he wrote:

Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?

I who have cursed

The drunken officer of British rule, how to choose

Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?

Betray them both, or give back what they give?

On January 23, 1930, Derek Alton Walcott was born in Castries, a port city on the island of St. Lucia. He was raised by his teacher's mother, the former Alix Maarlin, after his father, Warwick, a watercolorist and educator, passed away when he was a baby.

Like many St. Lucians, both of his parents came from marriages between people of different races. Raised as a Methodist, Derek was an anomaly in his Catholic high school, St. Mary's College, and on the mostly Roman Catholic island of St. Lucia.

"Another Life," a 4,000-line investigation into Mr. Walcott's life and surroundings, was published in 1973. Give credit...Giroux, Farrar, and Straus.

His schooling was very traditional and Anglocentric. The Muse of History was his essay. "I acquired the English language as my natural inheritance," he stated. "Ignore the daffodils and snow." Because they existed only in memory and imagination-that is, on paper-they were real, perhaps even more genuine than the scorching sun and the oleander.

At fourteen, he got his first poem published in a local magazine. While still attending St. Mary's, he started distributing his works of poetry in pamphlets thanks to a loan from his mother. Milton and Marlowe served as his early role models.

He started writing plays at the University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica, where he specialized in French, Latin, and Spanish. This marked the beginning of a turbulent but lifelong love affair with theatre. In 1950, St. Lucia hosted the production of his debut play, which was centered around the revolutionary Haitian leader Henri Christophe.

Mr. Walcott continued to compose and perform plays while teaching in St. Lucia, Grenada, and Jamaica following his graduation in 1953. Trinidad hosted productions of his verse tragedies "Ione" and "Sea at Dauphin" in 1954. Created in Trinidad in 1958, "Ti-Jean and His Brothers" is a retelling of a folk legend in which Lucifer attempts to steal the departed souls of three brothers.

After spending a year in New York studying directing under José Quintero, Mr. Walcott returned to the West Indies. He started a repertory company called the Little Carib Theatre Workshop, which later changed its name to the Trinidad Theatre Workshop in the late 1960s. The first piece the group performed was "Malcochon," written by Mr. Walcott.

British and American reviewers took notice of Mr. Walcott after the release of "In a Green Night" in 1962. In particular, Robert Lowell was enthusiastic and provided a gateway to the world of American literature. With every collection that came after, "Selected Poems" (1964), "The Castaway" (1969), "The Gulf" (1970), and "Sea Grapes" (1976), Mr. Walcott proved to be more than just a noteworthy local poet.

In a review of "The Gulf" published in The New York Times Book Review, poet and critic Selden Rodman stated, "Aficionados of Caribbean writing had been aware for a while that the writer Derek Walcott is the most considerable English-speakers poet who has come from the bone-white Arcadia of the old slaveocracies." "Now that his fourth volume of verse has been published, it should be clear that Walcott is among the best modern English-language poets."

The 2004 film "The Prodigal" is a synthesis of late life with a decidedly elegiac undertone. Thank you, Farr, Straus, and Giroux

The lyric element remained in Mr. Walcott's poetry. Still, in order to fit an epic treatment of the issues that had always fascinated him, he took on more and more intricate narrative undertakings and broadened his conception of the Caribbean. The standard for Mr. Walcott's later, more ambitious poems was established by his creative self-portrait "Another Life," which intricately and metaphorically intertwines the lush scenery of St. Lucia with the artist's evolving sensibilities.

Mr. Walcott cast a wide net in "Omeros," which takes its title from the contemporary Greek name for Homer. He covered all of Caribbean history from the beginning of time, paying particular emphasis to the slave trade and using Homeric legend to retell its tale. The Caribbean was transformed during his leadership from a backwater to a crossroads, or as academic Jorge Hernandez Martin described it in a 1994 article in the journal Americas: "a dispersion area, a sort of switchboard having input coming from and production to other regions of the world."

The poems of Mr. Walcott consistently dealt with exile and travel. In the 2000 film "Tiepolo's Hound," the novelist as well as the Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro-who was born and raised in the Caribbean and later moved to Paris-were depicted in tandem. Similar to his father, Mr. Walcott was a skilled watercolor painter; his landscapes can be found throughout "Tiepolo's Hound" and on his book jackets.

The meanderings depicted in "Omeros" were surpassed by Mr. Walcott's meandering career as an educator and professor at academic institutions across the globe. From 1981 until his retirement in 2007, he was a professor at Boston University, spending his time traveling frequently between Boston, New York, and St. Lucia.

A view of the author's restless movements was provided by "The Prodigal" (2004), a late-life conclusion with a decidedly elegiac undercurrent that transports the reader to Italy, Colombia, France, and Mexico. He wrote, "Prodigal, what are your wanderings about?" "The smoke of departure, the smoke of homecoming."

All three of Mr. Walcott's marriages ended with divorce. Sigrid Nama, his lifelong friend; two daughters, Anna Walcott-Hardy & Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw; a son, Peter, and numerous grandchildren are among his surviving family members. The playwright Roderick, his twin brother, passed away in 2000.

It was suggested that Mr. Walcott be appointed an honorary professor of poetry at Oxford University in 2009. When Oxford scholars received an anonymous parcel containing photocopied pages from a book detailing claims of sexual harassment made decades earlier by a Harvard student, it completely ruined his candidature. Mr. Walcott took his name away.

"I am disheartened by the vile methods employed in this election, so I would prefer not to enter a race for a position where it would bring shame to myself or to those who have endorsed me for the position," he stated to The Evening Standard in London. "Although I was delighted to be put forward for the post, I do not want to be part of it if it has deteriorated into a low & degrading attempt at character assassination," he continued.

Writing as an individual apart from a region of the world where literature was yet in its infancy was something Mr. Walcott was always aware of. It was a unique position, he claimed, with benefits. In his Nobel address, he described the "luck" of being present in a culture's early morning as "there can be virtues in deprivation."

He remarked, "It is always dawn in the world for every poet." "History is a lost, restless night; History and primordial wonder are our eternal beginnings, for poetry's destiny is to fall in affection with the world despite History."

Derek Walcott: Awards

Derek Walcott gained international acclaim for his poems during his lifetime. Among the honors he has received are:

• 1966 Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
• 1977 Guggenheim Fellowship; 1979 MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant; 1981 Honorary Member, American Academy & Institute of Arts and Letters
• 1988 Queen's Medal for Poetry
• 1993 Knight Commander of the Order of St. Lucia 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature

Conclusion

Derek Walcott was a writer, playwright, poet, and visual artist from the Caribbean. He was awarded the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature "for a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, supported by a historical vision, the outcome of a multinational commitment." He was born in Castries, St. Lucia.

His work is closely tied to the symbolism of myth and its relationship to culture, having emerged autonomously from the schools of magic realism that were forming in both South America and Europe around the time of his birth. His epic poem Omeros, which reinterpreted Homeric tales and customs to take readers across the Caribbean as well as to the American West and London, is the work for which he was best known.

In 1959, Walcott established the Trinidad Theatre Workshop, which has gone on to produce his plays as well as others. The organization was operating with its Board of Directors until his passing. In 1981, he also established Boston University's Boston Playwrights' Theatre. Walcott received the Anisfield-Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004 and, by 2007, had resigned from teaching drama and poetry in Boston University's Creative Writing Department. After retiring, he carried on giving readings and lectures all over the world. He split his time between New York City and his Caribbean residence.