Derek Walcott (born January 23, 1930,Castries, Saint Lucia—died March 17, 2017, Cap Estate) was a West Indian poet and playwright noted for works that explore the Caribbean cultural experience. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992.

Walcott was educated atSt. Mary’s College inSaint Lucia and at the University of theWest Indies in Jamaica. He began writingpoetry at an early age, taught at schools in Saint Lucia and Grenada, and contributed articles and reviews to periodicals in Trinidad and Jamaica. Productions of his plays began in Saint Lucia in 1950, and he studied theatre inNew York City in 1958–59. He lived thereafter in Trinidad and theUnited States, teaching for part of the year atBoston University.

Walcott was best known for his poetry, beginning withIn a Green Night: Poems 1948–1960 (1962). This book is typical of his early poetry in its celebration of the Caribbean landscape’s natural beauty. The verse inSelected Poems (1964),The Castaway (1965), andThe Gulf (1969) is similarly lush in style and incantatory in mood as Walcott expresses his feelings of personal isolation, caught between his European cultural orientation and the black folkcultures of his native Caribbean.Another Life (1973) is a book-length autobiographical poem. InSea Grapes (1976) andThe Star-Apple Kingdom (1979), Walcott uses a tenser, more economical style to examine the deep cultural divisions oflanguage and race in the Caribbean.The Fortunate Traveller (1981) andMidsummer (1984) explore his own situation as a black writer in America who has become increasingly estranged from his Caribbean homeland.

Britannica Quiz

A Study of Poetry

Walcott’sCollected Poems, 1948–1984, was published in 1986. In his book-length poemOmeros (1990), he retells the dramas ofHomer’sIliad andOdyssey in a 20th-century Caribbean setting. The poems inThe Bounty (1997) are mostly devoted to Walcott’s Caribbean home and the death of his mother. In 2000 Walcott publishedTiepolo’s Hound, a poetic biography of West Indian-born French painterCamille Pissarro with autobiographical references and reproductions of Walcott’s paintings. (The latter are mostly watercolours of island scenes. Walcott’s father had been a visual artist, and the poet began painting early on.) The book-length poemThe Prodigal (2004), its setting shifting between Europe andNorth America, explores the nature of identity and exile.Selected Poems, a collection of poetry from across Walcott’s career, appeared in 2007. Aging is a central theme inWhite Egrets (2010), a volume of new poems.

Of Walcott’s approximately 30 plays, the best-known areDream on Monkey Mountain (produced 1967), a West Indian’s quest to claim his identity and his heritage;Ti-Jean and His Brothers (1958), based on a West Indian folktale about brothers who seek to overpower the Devil; andPantomime (1978), an exploration of colonial relationships through theRobinson Crusoe story.The Odyssey: A Stage Version appeared in 1993. Many of Walcott’s plays make use of themes from black folkculture in the Caribbean.

The essays inWhat the Twilight Says (1998) areliterary criticism. They examine such subjects as the intersection ofliterature and politics and the art of translation.