Derek Walcott
Poet and Playwright · 1930–2017
Who is Derek Walcott?
Derek Walcott was a Saint Lucian poet, playwright, and painter, widely regarded as one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century writing in English. Born in Castries, Saint Lucia, in 1930 to a family of mixed African, English, and Dutch descent, he began writing poetry as a teenager and self-published his first collection at eighteen. He co-founded the Trinidad Theatre Workshop in 1959 and spent decades dividing his life between the Caribbean and teaching posts in the United States, notably at Boston University. His major works include the poetry collections In a Green Night, Sea Grapes, and The Star-Apple Kingdom, and the epic poem Omeros (1990), which reimagines Homeric myth through Caribbean landscape and history. His plays, including Dream on Monkey Mountain, explored colonialism, identity, and Creole culture. In 1992 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first Saint Lucian and one of very few Caribbean-born writers to receive the honor. He died in 2017 at his home in Cap Estate, Saint Lucia.
Sources: Nobel Prize official biography, "Derek Walcott – Facts," NobelPrize.org (1992) · Derek Walcott, Collected Poems 1948-1984 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986) · Derek Walcott, Omeros (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990)