1. 1930- ? Major West Indian Poet and Dramatist
Derek Alton Walcott
1930- ?
Major West Indian Poet and Dramatist

2. Derek Walcott Lived most of his life in Trinidad
                                                         
Lived most of his life in Trinidad
Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992
Studied conflict between heritage of European and West Indian culture

3. Themes in Walcott’s work
European vs. West Indian cultures
Movement from slavery to independence
His life long role as a nomad between two cultures

4. Walcott’s Poetry Characterized by
Allusions to English poetic tradition
Symbolic imagination both personal and Caribbean

5. Nobel Prize Lecture
“Poetry, which is perfection’s sweat but which must seem as fresh as the raindrops on a statue’s brow, combines the natural and the marmoreal; it conjugates both tenses simultaneously: the past and the present, if the past is the sculpture and the present the beads of dew or rain on the forehead of the past. There is the buried language and there is the individual vocabulary, and the process of poetry is one of excavation and of self-discovery.”

6. Life of Walcott
Born in Castries, St. Lucia, an isolated Caribbean island in the West Indies
Father, Warwick, was a Bohemian artist, died when Walcott was very young
Mother, Alix, teacher who taught him to love poetry

7. Family Background
Walcott said of his family: “I was raised in this obscure Caribbean poet, where my bastard father christened me for his shire, Warwick. The Bard’s country.”

8. Education Walcott was educated at St. Mary’s College, Castries
Received scholarship to the University College of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica
Studied French, Latin and Spanish
Studied theater in New York

9. Early Writing
Walcott wrote his first play Henri Christopher which was performed in 1950
Wrote for local newspaper, the Trinidad Guardian

10. Marriages
First marriage to Fay Moston, a secretary, broke up after a few years
Second wife, Margaret Maillard, was an almoner in a hospital
1976 – married Norline Metivier, also ended in divorce

11. Different careers
Walcott worked as a teacher at schools on several Caribbean islands
Started his career as a journalist, writing features and drama criticism
Worked as a professor of poetry at the University of Boston, divided time between Trinidad and US

12. Writing from Omeros
“ I sang our wide country, the Caribbean Sea who hated shoes, whose soles were as cracked as a stone, who was gentle with ropes, who had one suit alone,whom no man dared insult and who insulted no one, whose grin was a white breaker cresting, but whose frown was a growing thunderhead…”

13. Works of Walcott Made his debut at 18 with Twenty Five Poems
1964 – Recognition as a poet with In a Green Night
1981 – The Fortunate Traveller
1984 – Midsummer
Explored his situation as a black writer in America, estranged from Caribbean homeland

14. Voice of the Caribbean People
Walcott called himself “a mulatto of style”
Was of mixed black, Dutch and English descent
Fuses folk culture with classical and avant-garde
Writes of personal conflicts arising from his mixed-race background

15. A Far Cry from Africa 1962 “I who am poisoned with the blood of both,
Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?
I who have cursed
The drunken officer of British rule, how choose
Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?”