Derek Walcott, writer whose poetry celebrated the Caribbean . By
Stephanie Hanes and Matt Schudel Washington Post . WASHINGTON - Derek
Walcott, a Nobel laureate in literature who became one of the
English-speaking world's most renowned poets by portraying the lush,
complex world of the Caribbean with a precise language that echoed the
classics of literature, died Friday at his home on the island of St.
Lucia. He was 87. A family statement did not disclose the cause. Mr.
Walcott, who was born on the island of St. Lucia and published his
first poem at 14, won the Nobel Prize in 1992, becoming the first
writer from the Caribbean to receive the honor. In his poetry and
plays, he appropriated Greek classics, local folklore, and the British
literary canon in his explorations of the ambiguities of race, history,
and cultural identity. Although he taught for a quarter century at
Boston University and later in England, Mr. Walcott created a
distinctively Caribbean sensibility in his writing, rich with a sense
of the weather, warmth, and the rhythms of island life. In one of his
early poems, "Islands," he declared that his poetic ambition was "to
write / Verse crisp as sand, clear as sunlight, / Cold as the curved
wave, ordinary / As a tumbler of island water. His breakthrough came in
1962 with the collection "In a Green Night," which celebrated the
landscape and history of the Caribbean and explored Mr. Walcott's
conflicted identity as a multiracial descendant of a colonial culture.
In his 1962 poem "A Far Cry From Africa," he wrote: I who am poisoned
with the blood of both, Where shall I turn, divided to the vein? I who
have cursed The drunken officer of British rule, how choose Between
this Africa and the English tongue I love? Betray them both, or give
back what they give? The vibrant quality of Mr. Walcott's poetry was
"like entering a Renoir," British critic P.N. Furbank wrote in the
Listener newspaper in 1962, "full of summery melancholy, fresh and
stinging colors, luscious melody, and intense awareness of place. In
1973, Mr. Walcott published a book-length autobiographical poem,
"Another Life," that touched on his childhood, his spiritual growth,
and his struggles to forge an independent identity as an artist. Mr.
Walcott went on to publish more than 20 volumes of poetry and virtually
as many plays, many of which were produced in the United States and
throughout the Caribbean, often with the author as director. His Nobel
Prize citation noted, "In him, West Indian culture has found its great
poet. As a pure composer of verse, Mr. Walcott had few equals in his
time. He wrote in a smooth, carefully polished style, usually adhering
to the traditional forms of English poetry, such as iambic pentameter,
heroic couplets, and rhyme. Caught between the "virginal unpainted
world" of St. Lucia and the historic majesty of the English language,
Mr. Walcott wrote in his poem "The Schooner Flight" in the 1970s, "I
had no nation now but the imagination. Mr. Walcott started teaching
English and playwriting at BU in 1981. He was accused several times of
sexually harassing female students. He was a leading candidate for the
position of professor of poetry at Britain's University of Oxford in
2009, when the old charges of harassment resurfaced. Mr. Walcott
condemned what he called a "low, degrading attempt at character
assassination" and withdrew his name from consideration. The
professorship went to poet Ruth Padel, who soon resigned after
admitting that she had forwarded the allegations to journalists. Mr.
Walcott published a new volume every year or two, drawing praise from
such eminent literary critics as Helen Vendler of Harvard and Harold
Bloom of Yale. He enjoyed the friendship of some of the era's greatest
names in poetry, including Robert Lowell, Joseph Brodsky, and Seamus
Heaney. He received many literary honors and in 1981 was awarded a
MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, also known as a genius grant. In 1990,
two years before Mr. Walcott received the Nobel Prize, he published
what many critics considered his masterpiece, the 325-page poem
"Omeros. The ambitious work reimagined the ancient Greek epics of Homer
in modern-day St. Lucia. "What drove me was duty: duty to the Caribbean
light," Mr. Walcott told the New York Times in 1990. "The whole book is
an act of gratitude. It is a fantastic privilege to be in a place in
which limbs, features, smells, the lineaments and presence of the
people are so powerful. The poem has the scope of a novel, ranging from
the Caribbean back in time to ancient Greece, the British Empire, and
the 19th-century United States. Mr. Walcott evokes Joseph Conrad,
Herman Melville, James Joyce, and, of course, Homer - both the ancient
Greek poet and Winslow Homer, the American painter of "The Gulf Stream.
The characters in "Omeros" are fishermen who battle the weather and the
sea and who struggle with their all-too-human desires and shortcomings.
Helen of Troy is recast a haughty St. Lucian woman who works as a
waitress and sells trinkets at the beach. "What I wanted to do in the
book was to write about very simple people who I think are heroic," Mr.
Walcott told NPR in 2007. Derek Alton Walcott was born in Castries, the
capital of St. Lucia. The island became an independent country in 1979
after being a British colony for 165 years. Mr. Walcott had a twin
brother, Roderick, who became a playwright, and an older sister,
Pamela. Their father, a civil servant and skilled watercolor painter,
died when Mr. Walcott was 1. His mother taught school. While studying
at English-language schools, Mr. Walcott became devoted to English
poetry and received a scholarship to the University of the West Indies
in Jamaica. After teaching in St. Lucia, Grenada, and Jamaica, he
received a Rockefeller Foundation grant, which he used to study theater
in New York. For years, Mr. Walcott wrote as much drama as poetry, and
his plays were produced in Caribbean theaters, then in London and
Toronto and, by the late 1960s, in off-Broadway theaters in New York.
His plays drew on folk elements and typically were written in a more
casual, colloquial style than his poetry. His play "Dream on Monkey
Mountain," produced off-Broadway, won an Obie Award in 1971. In 1998,
he collaborated with singer-songwriter Paul Simon on the musical "The
Capeman," which had a short-lived run on Broadway. In 1981, with some
of his proceeds from the MacArthur grant, Mr. Walcott founded Boston
Playwrights' Theatre as a showcase for new plays. He wrote several
pieces for the stage near BU's campus and affiliated with the
university, including one, "Walker," that takes a look at Boston's
abolitionist roots through the eyes of the title character, a
self-taught free black man. "The thing I wanted to do was to have the
playwright in close contact with the actor, which is something in a
professional theatre that you just don't get," he told the theater in
an interview in 2007. "I thought the thing that would be best for any
playwright . . . was to have a program in which the actors and the
playwrights could relate immediately, and the actors could help in
terms of the shaping of the scripts. "For those of us who knew and
loved him, Derek's passing is a milestone in our lives - certainly it
is in mine," Kate Snodgrass, BU playwright professor and artistic
director at the theater, wrote on the theater's website. "And for the
world, we have lost a needed presence, a gifted poet and playwright, a
true literary giant.
