2008 - 2009 PARTICIPANTS |
 | Derek Walcott Nobel Prize-winning Poet Cultural Power The recipient of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature, Derek Walcott was born in Castries, Saint Lucia, in the West Indies. His first published poem, "1944" appeared in The Voice of St. Lucia when he was fourteen years old, and consisted of 44 lines of blank verse. By the age of nineteen, Walcott had self published two volumes, 25 Poems and Epitaph for the Young: XII Cantos. He attended the University of the West Indies, having received a Colonial Development and Welfare scholarship, and in 1951 published the volume Poems. In 1957, he was awarded a fellowship by the Rockefeller Foundation to study the American theater. Since then, he has published numerous collections of poetry, most recently Selected Poems, The Prodigal: A Poem, and Tiepolo's Hound. The founder of the Trinidad Theater Workshop, Walcott has also written several plays produced throughout the United States, The Odyssey: A Stage Version; The Isle is Full of Noises; Remembrance and Pantomime; Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays; Three Plays: The Last Carnival; Beef, No Chicken; and A Branch of the Blue Nile. His play Dream on Monkey Mountain won the Obie Award for distinguished foreign play of 1971. He founded Boston Playwrights' Theatre at Boston University in 1981. He has also published a collection of essays, What the Twilight Says. |
