Derek Walcott

Derek Walcott

Derek Walcott at his honorary dinner, Amsterdam, May 20th 2008
Born January 23, 1930 (1930-01-23) (age 81)
Castries, Saint Lucia
Occupation Poet, Playwright
Nationality Saint Lucia
Notable award(s) Nobel Prize in Literature
1992
Children Peter Walcott, Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw, Anna Walcott-Hardy
Signature

The Hon. Derek Alton Walcott, OCC (born January 23, 1930) is a Caribbean poet, playwright, writer and visual artist. Born in Castries, Saint Lucia[1], he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992.

His work, which developed independently of the schools of magic realism emerging in both South America and Europe at around the time of his birth, is intensely related to the symbolism of myth and its relationship to culture. He is best known for his epic poem Omeros, an allusive, loose reworking of Homeric story and tradition into a journey within the Caribbean and beyond to Africa, New England, the American West, Canada, and London (with frequent reference to the Greek Islands).

Walcott founded the Trinidad Theatre Workshop in 1959, which has produced his plays (and others) since that time, and remains active with its Board of Directors. He also founded Boston Playwrights' Theatre at Boston University in 1981 with the hope of creating a home for new plays in Boston, Massachusetts. Walcott retired from teaching poetry and drama in the Creative Writing Department at Boston University in 2007. In fall 2009, he will commence a three year distinguished scholar in residence position at University of Alberta. He continues to give readings and lectures throughout the world. He divides his time between his home in the Caribbean and New York City.

Contents

Walcott as playwright and theorist

Walcott has published more than twenty plays. The majority of these plays have been produced by the Trinidad Theatre Workshop, and have also been widely staged elsewhere. Many of them deal, either directly or indirectly, with the liminal status of the West Indies in the postcolonial period. Epistemological, ontological, economical, political, and social themes make regular appearances in Walcott's plays.

In his 1970 essay on art (and specifically theatre) in his native region, What the Twilight Says: An Overture (published in Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays; see bibliography), Walcott bemoans the lasting effects of over 400 years of colonial rule. He reflects on the West Indies as colonized space, and the problems presented by a region with little in the way of truly indigenous forms, and with little national or nationalist identity. He states: “...we are all strangers here (10). [...] Our bodies think in one language and move in another...”(31). In this manner, Walcott shifts his poetic language between formal English and patois to highlight the linguistic dexterity of the Caribbean people. While recognising the profound psychological and material wrongs of the colonial project, Walcott simultaneously celebrates the hybridisation of Antillean cultures. His epic poem Omeros exposes the complex cultural strains that converge in his native St. Lucia, celebrating at once the European, Amerindian, and African heritage shared by the islanders.

Discussions of epistemological effects of colonization inform plays such as Ti-Jean and his Brothers and Pantomime. One of the eponymous brothers in Ti-Jean and his Brothers (Mi-Jean) is shown to have much information, but to truly know nothing. Every line Mi-Jean recites is rote knowledge gained from the coloniser, and as such is unable to be synthesized and thus is inapplicable to his existence as colonised person.

Walcott's plays weave together a variety of forms; including those of the folktale, morality play, allegory, fable, ritual and myth; as well as using emblematic and mythological characters to address issues in non-realistic ways.

Padel controversy

In 1981 Walcott was accused of sexual harassment of a freshman student at Harvard, and [2] reached a settlement in 1996 over a sexual harassment allegation at Boston University.[3]

In 2009 Walcott was a leading candidate for the position of Oxford Professor of Poetry but withdrew his candidancy, after a whispering campaign suddenly brought these two sexual harassment allegations to light.[4][5]

The position was awarded to Ruth Padel, but she resigned after only 9 days, when her involvement in the smear campaign against Walcott was revealed. Padel's comportment in the affair was roundly criticized by a number of respected poets in a letter of support addressed to Walcott and published in the Times Literary Supplement[6].

In 2010 he accepted an offer from the University of Essex to become the new Professor of Poetry of the university, from which he received an honorary doctorate in 2008.[7]

Works

Poetry collections

Years are linked to "[year] in poetry" articles:

Plays

Further reading

See also

References

  1. ↑ http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1992/walcott-bio.html
  2. ↑ Dziech, Billie Wright; Linda Weiner (1990). The lecherous professor: sexual harassment on campus (second ed.). Urbana. IL: University of Illinois Press. pp. 29–31. ISBN 0252061187. http://books.google.com/books?id=Cy9g0huofa0C. 
  3. ↑ Griffiths, Sian and Jack Grimston. "Sex Pest File Gives Oxford Poetry Race a Nasty Edge.", in The Sunday Times, May 10, 2009
  4. ↑ Cole, Olivia. "Nobel Winner Quits Oxford Poetry Race Over Sex Claims.", in The London Evening Standard, May 12, 2009.
  5. ↑ Khan, Urmee; Eden, Richard (2009-05-24). "Ruth Padel under pressure to resign Oxford post over emails about rival poet Derek Walcott". London: Daily Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/5378474/Ruth-Padel-under-pressure-to-resign-Oxford-post-over-emails-about-rival-poet-Derek-Walcott.html. Retrieved 2009-05-24. 
  6. ↑ Al Alvarez, Alan Brownjohn, Carmen Bugan, David Constantine, Elizabeth Cook, Robert Conquest, Jonty Driver, Seamus Heaney, Jenny Joseph, Patrick Kavanagh, Grevel Lindop, Patrick McGuiness, Lucy Newlyn, Bernard O’Donoghue, Michael Schmidt, Jon Stallworthy, Michael Suarez, Don Thomas, Anthony Thwaite, 'Oxford Professor of Poetry', Times Literary Supplement, June 3, 2009, p. 6.
  7. ↑ "Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott is new Professor of Poetry". University of Essex. 2009-12-11. http://www.essex.ac.uk/news/event.aspx?e_id=1156. Retrieved 2010-01-10. 

External links

Nobel Laureates in Literature

Saul Bellow (1976) · Vicente Aleixandre (1977) · Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978) · Odysseas Elytis (1979) · Czesław Miłosz (1980) · Elias Canetti (1981) · Gabriel García Márquez (1982) · William Golding (1983) · Jaroslav Seifert (1984) · Claude Simon (1985) · Wole Soyinka (1986) · Joseph Brodsky (1987) · Naguib Mahfouz (1988) · Camilo José Cela (1989) · Octavio Paz (1990) · Nadine Gordimer (1991) · Derek Walcott (1992) · Toni Morrison (1993) · Kenzaburō Ōe (1994) · Séamus Heaney (1995) · Wisława Szymborska (1996) · Dario Fo (1997) · José Saramago (1998) · Günter Grass (1999) · Gao Xingjian (2000)
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