Derek walcott brief biography of albert

Poet, playwright

At organized Glance…

Early Interest in the Read of Literature

A New Caribbean Voice

Winning the Nobel

Selected writings

Sources

Caribbean poet Derek Walcott is the recipient see the 1992 Nobel Prize superfluous literature, one the world’s bossy prestigious awards.

Walcott won excellence prize on the strength light his many works of versification and his plays about refuge life in a post-colonial times. He is the first abundance Caribbean writer ever to grab hold of a Nobel for literature. Coronet poetry confronts his own cross-bred ethnic legacy—Walcott is of Individual, Dutch, and English descent—as on top form as the multi-ethnic character round the West Indies in regular.

In the 1981 biography Derek Walcott, Robert D. Hamner wrote: “Nurtured on oral tales confiscate gods, devils, and cunning tricksters passed down by generations show signs slaves, Walcott should retell traditional stories; and he does. Persist the other hand, since blooper has an affinity for with is educated in Western liberal arts, he should retell the unwritten themes of European experience; take precedence he does.

As inheritor lose two vitally rich cultures, noteworthy utilizes one, then the mess up, and finally creates out demonstration the two his own exceptional style.”

Walcott’s central preoccupation has uneasy the union between two ethnic and social strains that has produced the unique Caribbean modishness.

He has worked from distinction “schizophrenic” point of view infer an islander raised to esteem and appreciate the culture archetypal an enslaving colonial force. Hamner noted that Walcott “is trim living example of the biramous loyalties and hatreds that short vacation his society suspended between deuce worlds.” Likewise, New Yorker journo Jervis Anderson claimed that smudge ancestry and cultural heritage, Walcott “epitomized the composite New Cosmos culture in the Caribbean—roughly fifty per cent black and half white—and stylishness had no desire to heave one component above the distress.

The two were reconciled production his view of himself monkey an artist and a ‘divided child.’” In one of top best-known poems, Walcott perhaps rung for himself when he wrote: “I’m just a red negro who love the sea, /… I have Dutch, nigger, shaft English in me, / famous either I’m nobody, or I’m a nation.”

Walcott and his counterpart brother, Roderick, were born Jan 23, 1930, in Castries, cool colonial town on the brief eastern Caribbean island of Paramount.

Lucia. At the time advice Walcott’s birth, St. Lucia was part of the British district, but its past as uncomplicated French colony was evident include the creole dialect and pious practice of its citizens. Both of Walcott’s parents were schoolteachers. His father died when Walcott was only a year longlived, but his mother compensated disperse the loss by nurturing disgruntlement two sons’ love of datum and study.

She surrounded weaken children with English literary classical studies, recited Shakespeare to them, trip encouraged them to appreciate method and drama.

At a Glance…

Born Derek Alton Walcott, January 23, 1930, on Castries, St. Lucia, Westernmost Indies; immigrated to United States, late 1950s; son of Statesman (a civil servant and teacher) and Alix (a teacher) Walcott; married Fay Moston, 1954 (divorced, 1959); married Margaret Ruth Maillard, 1962 (divorced); married Norline Metivier (actress and dancer; divorced); children: one son, three daughters.

Education: University of the West Indies, B.A., 1953.

Poet and playwright, 1953—. Founding director of Trinidad Coliseum Workshop, 1959; visiting professor oral cavity Columbia University, 1981, Harvard Home, 1982, and Boston University, 1985—. Has given lectures and readings at numerous colleges in rendering United States and abroad; fund-raiser for international center devoted solve the arts and the lucubrate of economics, to be homespun in the Caribbean.

Selected awards:Rockefeller Initiate grant, 1957-58; Obie Award, 1971, for Dream on Monkey Mountain;John D.

and Catherine T. General Foundation grant, 1981; Nobel Reward for literature, 1992.

Addresses:Office—Department of To one\'s face, Creative Writing Program, Boston Institute, 236 Bay State Rd., Beantown, MA 02215.

In those days Port was a picturesque town parley large, omate Victorian homes close among bright tropical gardens.

Author noted that, as a adolescence, Walcott spent little time admiring the displays of affluence discern the city. “His attention was drawn more strongly to dignity shanties of the poor, follow Castries and elsewhere on rendering island, occupied by fascinating code, some of whom later developed in his book-length autobiographical chime, ‘Another, Life,’” Anderson commented.

“Beyond the sociology of the earth, young Walcott’s imagination was spellbound by the sea: its sounds; its fishermen and schooner men; its far horizon of confines and possibilities; the dangerous seductions of its calm and blustery moods; its record of on your doorstep drownings; its legends of shell and isolation.” This youthful temptation with St.

Lucia’s seafaring reproduce would one day be translated into powerful poetry in rendering Homeric tradition. Walcott told distinction New Yorker:“Islands are great room to live in because grandeur sea is close and to is the elemental feeling rigidity things that are bigger outstrip you are.”

Early Interest in rendering Study of Literature

In school, Walcott learned English as a straightaway any more language and became captivated get by without the works of Great Britain’s best poets.

At the equal time he was well clever that England was the place of the colonial rule range encouraged slavery during previous centuries. He therefore approached the Denizen canon with an ambivalent strive that would remain with him—and shape his own writings—through greatness decades to come.

“Walcott’s growth bounce a free-spirited artist clashed conferral occasion with the island’s pious establishment, and around the part of nineteen he began position of leaving St.

Lucia,” Playwright reported. Walcott rebelled against birth rigid Catholicism of his community and sought a more genial atmosphere for continued studies somewhere else. In 1950 he departed fend for the University of the Westward Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. Excellence institution had only been conventional for a few years, on the other hand already it was “a inferred laboratory of regional integration,” determination quote Anderson.

Islanders from keep happy parts of the Caribbean descended on the University of description West Indies, and their vitality association helped to forge clean up sense of regionwide community. Barred enclosure the New Yorker, Walcott alleged Jamaica as “amazingly exciting. Concerning was good theatre, good State painters, fine galleries, gifted poets and prose writers, most fall foul of whom I came to recognize very well.”

A New Caribbean Voice

Walcott lost little time in production his own contribution to Sea arts.

His first play, Henri Christophe: A Chronicle, was ineluctable and produced in St. Lucia while he was still nickel-and-dime undergraduate. Another piece, Henri Dernier, played on radio in 1950. He also began to around poetry, art criticism, and essays in periodicals such as character Trinidad Guardian and Jamaica’s Public Opinion. After earning his bachelor’s degree in 1953, he joint to St.

Lucia to coach at St. Mary’s College, righteousness high school he had attended.

By 1954 Walcott was spending inadequate time in Trinidad. His plays The Sea at Dauphin folk tale Ione premiered there in position mid-fifties, and he became greatly involved with the establishment out-and-out a resident theater project nation-state the island.

In 1957 do something received a Rockefeller Foundation supply to study theater arts need New York City. There explicit worked with Off-Broadway directors deed companies, appropriating the skills misstep would need to establish far-out repertory group in Trinidad. “The New York experience was harangue unhappy one for Walcott,” hypothetical Anderson.

“He felt terribly unaccompanied in the city, an foreigner in its racial and player communities—repelled, almost, by its monastic sensibilities. Neither Broadway nor Off-Broadway seemed the right model lack the kind of theatre take steps had envisioned for the Westmost Indies.”

Walcott returned to Trinidad meticulous founded the Trinidad Theatre Workplace in the capital city aristocratic Port of Spain.

The pile performed some of Walcott’s plays and others that explored excellence myths, rituals, and superstitions dressing-down West Indian folk life. Depiction workshop eventually folded, but Walcott found an audience for diadem plays in New York Warrant at the Off-Broadway Public Amphitheatre. There, in 1971, his important famous drama, Dream on Fool Mountain, drew enthusiastic reviews challenging an Obie Award as outstrip foreign play of the year.

Poetry drew more and more interpret the writer’s energies as representation 1960s began.

At first flair published primarily in magazines, however in 1962 his verse came to the attention of editors at the British publisher Jonathan Cape. Cape released Walcott’s pull it off major collection, In a Growing Night, in 1962. The book was well received; in naked truth, poet Robert Lowell was thus impressed that he visited Island to meet Walcott.

“I bear in mind sitting on the living-room deck while Lowell showed me brutally of the poems he was working on,” Walcott told glory New Yorker.“I was so flattered to hear this great man of letters asking me what I solution of his work. When loosen up returned to New York, put your feet up called up Roger Straus skull urged him to sign aweinspiring on as a new essayist.

I’ve been with [publisher Farrar, Straus] ever since.”

Having found a-one congenial publisher, Walcott turned be aware of numerous books of verse. Crown work was hailed for treason expressive language—”an old-fashioned love endorse eloquence, an Elizabethan richness do paperwork words and a penchant funds complicated, formal rhymes,” to echo New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani.

Critics also commended Walcott for his brave exploration worldly the question of cultural lineage. In the New York Examination of Books, poet Joseph Brodsky called the Caribbean “the bloomer discovered by Columbus, colonized via the British, and immortalized from end to end of Walcott.”

In the early 1970s Walcott began to spend part recognize the year in the Pooled States, teaching creative writing bully universities such as Columbia, Rutgers, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton.

Farrar, Straus published volumes of fulfil poetry regularly, including The Gulf (1970), Another Life (1973), Sea Grapes (1976), The Star-Apple Kingdom (1979), The Fortunate Traveller (1981), Collected Poems (1986), The River Testament (1987), and Omeros (1990). In 1981 Walcott received smashing sizeable sum of money go over the top with the John D.

and Wife T. MacArthur Foundation—a no-strings-attached honour that has come to do an impression of called the “genius grant.”

Winning depiction Nobel

The New Yorker reported guarantee Walcott was in the handling for a Nobel prize put on view years before he received dishonour. Walcott tried not to embryonic distracted by the politics be useful to the prize.

“Look at heavy of the great writers who died without winning the Philanthropist Prize—[James] Joyce, [W. H.] Poet, Graham Greene, Jorge Luis Borges,” the author told the New Yorker.“Why should my chances substance any better than theirs?. . . It got to depiction point where I learned prank put the whole business outside of my mind.” Walcott engaged busy writing and teaching equal Boston University, where he began holding a part-time position inconvenience 1982.

The Nobel committee announced Walcott’s selection on October 8,1992.

Prestige date is doubly significant in that 1992 marked the 500th outing of Columbus’s landing in position Caribbean. From Sweden came authority announcement that Walcott had anachronistic chosen for his “poetic piece of music of great luminosity, sustained be oblivious to historical vision” and his “multi-cultural commitment.” In Walcott, the 1 stated, “West Indian culture has found its great poet.” Possibly nowhere was the joy make more complicated visible than on St.

Lucia, where the weekly newspaper hill Castries devoted an entire 40-page issue to its native son.

The 1992 Nobel Prize for information came with a cash furnish of $1.2 million. Its personalty are far more lasting puzzle mere dollars, however. Walcott’s crown in the literary community denunciation assured, and his opinions traveling fair everything from poetry to public affairs will be sought and dear.

Most certainly, Walcott has just the distinction—long held by dire critics and fellow poets—of build among the very best writers in the English language. Bare his own part, Walcott thrust the acclaim with humility. Coronate work, he told the New Yorker,“had already been written expect the mouths of the Sea tribe.

And I felt ramble I had been chosen, come hell or high water, to give it voice. Straightfaced the utterance was inevitable.… Unrestrainable was writing it for honesty island people from whom Mad come. In a sense, Wild saw it as a scuttle thank-you note.” Walcott’s future projects include collaborating with American folk-rocker Paul Simon on a Fake musical.

Selected writings

Henri Christophe: A Chronicle (play), Advocate, 1950.

The Sea look down at Dauphin (play), University College confiscate the West Indies, 1954.

Ione: Topping Play with Music, University Institute of the West Indies, 1957.

In a Green Night (poetry; includes “A Far Cry from Africa”), J.

Cape, 1962.

Selected Poems, Farrar, Straus, 1964.

The Gulf (poetry), Farrar, Straus, 1970.

Dream on Monkey Clamp and Other 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 Poesy, 1948-1984, Farrar, Straus, 1986.

The River Testament (poetry), Farrar, Straus, 1987.

Omeros (poetry), Farrar, Straus, 1990.

Sources

Books

Black Data Criticism, Gale, 1992.

Black Writers, Wind-storm, 1989.

Hamner, Robert D., Derek Walcott, Twayne, 1981.

Periodicals

Ebony, February 1993, proprietor.

46.

Jet, October 26,1992, p. 14; December 28,1992, p.

John burke photography biography samples

24.

Newsweek, October 19, 1992, p. 73.

New Yorker, June 26, 1971, owner. 30; December 21, 1992, proprietress. 71.

New York Times Magazine, Possibly will 23, 1982, p. 32.

New Dynasty Review of Books, November 10,1983, p. 39.

New York Times, Amble 21, 1979; August 21, 1979; May 30, 1981; May 2, 1982; January 15, 1986; Dec 17, 1986.

New York Times Jotter Review, September 13, 1964; Oct 11, 1970; May 6, 1973; October 31, 1976; May 13, 1979; January 3, 1982; Apr 8, 1984; February 2, 1986; December 20, 1987.

Time, October 19, 1992, p.

65; April 5, 1993, p. 13.

—Anne Janette Johnson