The Antilles

23 Janurary 1930 – 2017

Derek Alton Walcott is a Caribbean poet, playwright, writer and visual artist. Born in Castries, Saint Lucia[1], he won 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 the Africa, New England, the American West, Canada, and London (with frequent reference to the Greek Islands). Walcott founded the Trinidad Theatre Worksho…