Derek Walcott
(b. 1930)

Derek Walcott is generally considered the most distinguished Caribbean poet of his time. The title of one of his best-known poems, "Divided Child," captures his essence as an English-speaking West Indian of racially mixed descent. Born on St. Lucia, in the British West Indies, Walcott identifies both with his native Caribbean culture, its dialects and celebrations, and with the Western culture of St. Lucia's former colonizers–the British. Walcott has embraced Western poets ranging from Homer to Shakespeare and especially to English poets like Christopher Marlowe, John Milton, and Andrew Marvell. In the absence of an existing Caribbean literary tradition, he has appropriated many ideas and characters from the Western literary tradition. He has always succeeded, however, in making these classic examples express the difficult position of Caribbeans in the twentieth century.

Walcott was born, along with his twin brother, Roderick, in the town of Castries, on St. Lucia, on January 23, 1930. His father, Warwick, a poet and painter, died suddenly when Derek was one year old. His mother, a teacher and administrator, introduced Derek to a family library stocked with British literature; she liked to recite verse around the house. During his grade-school years, Derek studied his father's oil paintings and watercolors, as well as his efforts at writing.

In later life, he spoke of choosing to continue the artistic work that had been halted by his father's premature death. With financial help from his mother, Walcott was able to publish his first volume of poetry, 25 Poems, at age 18. He could already imitate the great English poets effortlessly, and his early poems exulted in the beauty of the natural world.

Walcott came into his own with the publication of In A Green Night (1962), a book of poems influenced by Andrew Marvell. In the poem "A Far Cry From Africa," Walcott sounded his recurring theme of the divided self:

I who have cursed
The drunken officer of British rule,
how choose
Between this Africa and the English tongue
I love?

His choice is ultimately neither Africa nor England, but the spellbinding natural world of the Caribbean.

As he advanced as a poet, Walcott also led a second career as a dramatist. He believes that theater is an apt form for Caribbean cultures, and, after a year of study in the U.S., he founded the Little Carib Workshop (later to become the Trinidad Theater Workshop) in 1959. A decade later, Walcott had staged his plays in many venues around the world.

Walcott continued his rapid output with Another Life (1973), an autobiographical poem of more than 4,000 lines. By 1981, Walcott had acquired international fame for his skill with musical effects. He experimented brilliantly with rhyme schemes.

He considered as friends major figures like Robert Lowell, Joseph Brodsky, and Seamus Heaney. Midsummer was published in 1984. Finally, in 1986, Collected Poems 1948–1984 was published–an international literary event.

Walcott expressed mixed feelings at the publication of Collected Poems. He worried that the book revealed his flaws as much as his strengths. "You're aware," he said, "that you have failed your imagination to some degree, your ambitions." He spoke of trying to take a different approach, to write with "antipoetic vehemence." The beginnings of this new style can be seen in Midsummer. Walcott further developed it in The Arkansas Testament, published in 1987. He was writing in a plainer, more direct language.

In 1990, Walcott returned to his lifelong preoccupation with the sea-world of the Caribbean with the long narrative poem Omeros. In its rendering of a life on the sea, Walcott's poem evokes Homer's Odyssey. Walcott, however, insisted that his island myth was not about heroic experience–at least not the way that the epics of the ancient Greek poet Homer are. Omeros's main characters are West Indian fishermen of small means and modest ambitions.

In 1992, Derek Walcott was granted the highest literary prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature. In his acceptance speech, he discussed the influence of Homer's Odyssey on his vision of West Indian life. He thus sought to blend Old World traditional culture and unique New World communities, giving his work its special place in post–World War II literature of the Americas.

In 1959, Walcott founded the Trinidad Theater Workshop, which he headed for the next 17 years. His vision of the theater is shaped by his appreciation for the energy, creativity, and dialects of Caribbean culture. Walcott has tried to integrate the African folk culture he experienced on the streets of Castries, St. Lucia, and other country villages with classical drama. The Caribbean theater he has helped to create pulsates with the beat of Calypso, a native Caribbean music and dance form.

The history of the Caribbean people lies in their myths, expressed in the celebrations of Carnival and other West Indian rituals. These rituals, folklore and oral tradition, Creole dialects, and popular speech all play roles in the modern Caribbean drama created by Walcott. He sees work in the theater as a reaching outward, a creation of community through art. In channeling the folklore and myth of Caribbean culture into his theatrical works, Walcott creates a sense of history for a former British colony that has had little of its own.

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