POET PROFILE

Derek Walcott was born on this day in Saint Lucia, in the West Indies, in 1930.   He is a poet, playwright, and professor. He was raised in a colonial society and educated as a subject of Great Britain. In the West Indies where they spoke a French/English local dialect, Walcott learned English as a second language. He has become highly skilled  in it's use, and his many writings have reflected his divided allegiance to a European and a Caribbean culture and ancestry.

Walcott attended St. Mary's College in Saint Lucia and the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. After graduation he moved to Trinidad where he became a teacher and a journalist. He has taught in several universities in the United States, as well as Grenada, and Jamaica.

Throughout the past several decades, Walcott has won many awards for his poetry and drama, including the Nobel Prize in Literature in  1992. He was the first Caribbean writer to achieve that honor.

Following in the footsteps of his father, who was a poet and a painter, Walcott trained as a painter under a professional artist, and his later poetry collections included his own illustrations in watercolors.

Walcott's works have received high praises from major poets, writers, and critics from all over the world.  He is a living legend.

To read his entire bio and sample his poetry Google search his name