Derek (Alton) Walcott (1930-)

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http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/walcott.htm

The major West Indian poet and dramatist writing in English today. Derek Walcott has lived most of his life in Trinidad. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1992. Walcott has studied the conflict between the heritage of European and West Indian culture, the long way from slavery to independence, and his own role as a nomad between cultures. His poems are characterized by allusions to the English poetic tradition and a symbolic imagination that is at once personal and Caribbean.

"Poetry, which is perfection's sweat but which must seem as fresh as the raindrops on a statue's brow, combines the natural and the marmoreal; it conjugates both tenses simultaneously: the past and the present, if the past is the sculpture and the present the beads of dew or rain on the forehead of the past. There is the buried language and there is the individual vocabulary, and the process of poetry is one of excavation and of self-discovery." (from the Nobel Lecture, 1992)

Derek Walcott was born at Castries, St Lucia, an isolated Caribbean island in the West Indies. His father, Warwick, was a Bohemian artist; he died when Walcott was very young. "I was raised in this obscure Caribbean poet," he later wrote in a poem of his family, "where my bastard father christened me for his shire, / Warwick. The Bard's country." Walcott's mother, Alix, was a teacher, born in Dutch St Maarten. She was very well read and also taught her children to love poetry.

Walcott educated at St Mary's College, Castries. He received a scholarship to the University College of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica, where he studied French, Latin and Spanish. His first play, HENRI CHRISTOPHER, was performed in 1950. In 1953 Walcott moved to Trinidad and in 1958-59 Walcott studied theater in New York. In Trinidad he worked for the local newspaper the Trinidad Guardian. Walcott's marriage to Fay Moston, a secretary, broke up after a few years. His second wife, Margaret Maillard, was an almoner in a hospital. In 1976 he married Norline Metivier; the marriage also ended in divorce.

From 1953 to 1957 Walcott worked as a teacher at schools on several Caribbean islands. He then started his career as a journalist, writing features for Public Opinion in Kingston and features and drama critics for the Trinidad Guardian. In 1950 Walcott founded the St Lucia Arts Guild. He has worked as a professor of poetry at the University of Boston, and divided his time between Trinidad and the USA.

"I sang our wide country, the Caribbean Sea
who hated shoes, whose soles were as cracked as a stone,
who was gentle with ropes, who had one suit alone,
whom no man dared insult and who insulted no one,
whose grin was a white breaker cresting, but whose frown
was a growing thunderhead..."
(from Omeros)

As poet Walcott made his debut at the age of eighteen with TWENTY FIVE POEMS, which was privately printed. His widespread recognition as a poet came with IN A GREEN NIGHT (1964). It manifested his primary aims: to create a literature truthful to the West Indian life. In THE FORTUNATE TRAVELLER (1981) and MIDSUMMER (1984) Walcott explored his own situation as a black writer in America, who has become estranged from his Caribbean homeland. The very titles of such books as CASTAWAY (1965) and THE GULF (1969) referred to his feelings of artistic isolation and alienation. St. Lucia, where he was born, belongs to a belt of French-speaking islands. Walcott himself is a native English speaker and bilingual in also speaking Creole, the language of the rural areas.

During his trips to the United States and Europe in the 1960s, Walcott made friends with several writers in England and America. In an interview in Walcott said: "But there is still an isolation in the sense that, as West Indian writers, whether we live in London or the West Indies, we are both cut off from and are a part of a tradition." Among the subjects Walcott has continually returned, is the story of Robinson Crusoe, and the multicultural mixture of identities. Walcott has rejected the label of "voice of the Caribbean people", saying: "I'm not even interested in sharing feelings of the people, because those who have been asked to share the feelings of the people are the ones who get shot first."

"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?"
(from A Far Cry from Africa, 1962)

Walcott's has called himself "a mulatto of style." His most ambitious work is considered the epic poem OMEROS (1990), which takes its title from the Greek word for 'Homer', and recalls the dramas of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey in a Caribbean setting. It consist of sixty-four chapters divided into seven books. The central characters are two fishermen, Achilles and Philocrete. Among its subjects are sufferings of exile and the contemporary Caribbean life. The task of the bard is sing of lost lives and a new hope. The Odyssean figure of Shabine in 'The Schooner Flight' expresses his rage against racism and rejection of colonial culture: "I'm just a red nigger who love the sea, / I had a sound colonial education, / I have Dutch, nigger and English in me, / and either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation."

From 1959 to 1971 Walcott was the founding director of the Little Carib Theatre (later the Trinidad Theatre Workshop). Walcott has written a large number of plays for stage and radio. Of these DREAM OF MONKEY MOUNTAIN was commissioned originally by the Royal Shakespeare Company in the late 1960s but produced finally in the USA. The work is considered to be his most impressive play. Walcott has also collaborated on several musicals with Galt McDermott, best-known from the hippie musical Hair. The Basement Theatre, directed by Walcott, participated in 1967 in Canada's Centennial Celebrations. It was the first West Indian drama company to perform outside the region.

Walcott has written both in standard English and in West Indian dialect. His plays examining the postcolonial condition owe much to folk and Creole tradition and history. They combine story-telling, singing, dancing, and the rhythms of calypso with richly metaphorical speech which mingles verse and prose. His autobiographical works include the poem ANOTHER LIFE (1973), inspired James Joyce's self-examination in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. TIEPOLO'S HOUND (2000) was about the painter Camille Pissarro and the poet himself. The book was published with reproductions of Walcott's paintings. Walcott' success has inspired many aspiring Caribbean writers. His twin brother Roderick was a playwright. The death of Roderick was one of the subjects of THE PRODIGAL (2004), which Walcott called his last book.

For further reading: Derek Walcott. Memeory as Vision: Another Life by E. Baugh (1979); Derek Walcott: Poet of the Islands by Ned Thomas (1980); Derek Walcott by R.D. Hamner (1981); Derek Walcott's Poetry by R. Terada (1993); Critical Perspectiveson Derek Walcott, ed. by R.D. Hamner (1993); Postcolonial Literatures: Achebe, Ngugi, Desai, Walcott, ed. by M. Parker and R. Starkey (1995); Conversations With Derek Walcott, ed. by by Derek Walcott & William Baer (1996); Derek Walcott & West Indian Drama by Bruce King (1997); Beating a Restless Drum: The Poetics of Kamau Brathwaite and Derek Walcott by June D. Bobb ( 1998); Derek Walcott by John Thieme (1999); Derek Walcott: A Caribbean Life by Bruce Alvin King (2000) - Other writers born from Caribbean: George Lamming, Paula Marshall, E.K. Brathwaite, Austin Clarke, Jamaica Kincaid, G.C. Thomas, Caryl Phillips, Edouard Glissant, Jean Rhys, Phyllis Shand Allfrey, Aimé Fernand Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Merle Hodge, James Berry, John Hearne, Andrew Salkey, Michael Thelwell, Joan Riley, C.L.R. James, Eric Williams, Samuel Selvon, Michael Anthony, V.S. Naipaul, Eark Lovelace, Shiva Naipaul

Selected works:

poetry: 25 POEMS (1948); EPITAPH FOR THE YOUNG (1949); POEMS (1951); IN A GREEN NIGHT: POEMS 1948-60 (1962); SELECTED POEMS (1964); THE CASTAWAY AND OTHER POEMS (1965); THE GULF AND OTHER POEMS (1969); ANOTHER LIFE (1973); SEA GRAPES (1976); THE STAR-APPLE KINGDOM (1980); SELECTED POETRY (1981); THE FORTUNATE TRAVELLER (1982); MIDSUMMER (1984); COLLECTED POEMS 1948-84 (1986); THE ARKANSAS TESTAMENT (1987); OMEROS (1990); POEMS 1965-1980 (1993), BOUNTY (1997); TIEPOLO'S HOUND (2000); THE PRODIGAL (2004)
plays: CRY FOR A LEADER (1950); HENRI CHRISTOPHE (1950); ROBIN AND ANDREA (1950); SENZA ALCUN SOSPETTO (1950); THE PRICE OF MERCY (1951); THREE ASSASSINS (1951); HARRY OERNIER (1952); THE CHARLATAN (1954); CROSSROADS (1954); THE SEA AT DAUPHIN (1954); THE GOLDEN LIONS (1956); THE WINE OF THE COUNTY (1956); TI-JEAN AND HIS BROTHERS (1957); DRUMS AND COLOURS (1958); JOURMARD (1959); MALCOCHAN (1959); BATAI (1965); DREAM ON MONKEY MOUNTAIN (1967); FRANKLIN (1969); IN A FINE CASTLE (1970); THE JOKER OF SEVILLE (1974, with G. McDermott); REMEMBRANCE (1977); THE SNOW QUEEN (1977); PANTOMIME (1978); MARIE LEVEAU (1979, with G.McDermott); THE ISLE IS FULL OF NOISES (1982); BEEF, NO CHICKEN (1985); THE ODYSSEY (1993)
non-fiction: WHAT THE TWILIGHT SAYS, 1998

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这个网站上有他的诗可听。

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/220



Derek Walcott

Derek Walcott was born in Saint Lucia, the West Indies, in 1930, and began writing poetry at the age of eighteen. He graduated from the University of the West Indies, and in 1957 was awarded a fellowship by the Rockefeller Foundation to study the American theater. He is the founder of the Trinidad Theater Workshop, and his plays have been produced throughout the United States. His play Dream on Monkey Mountain won the Obie Award for distinguished foreign play of 1971. He also received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature, a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award, a Royal Society of Literature Award, and, in 1988, the Queen's Medal for Poetry. He is an honorary member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Walcott's poetry collections include Tiepolo's Hound (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000), The Bounty (1997), Omeros (1990), The Arkansas Testament (1987), Collected Poems: 1948-1984 (1986), Midsummer (1986), The Fortunate Traveller (1981), The Star-Apple Kingdom (1979), Sea Grapes (1976), Another Life (1973), The Gulf (1970), The Castaway (1965), and In a Green Night (1962). His first collection of essays, What the Twilight Says (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), was published in 1998. His plays include The Odyssey: A Stage Version (1992); The Isle is Full of Noises (1982); Remembrance and Pantomime (1980); The Joker of Seville and O Babylon! (1978); Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays (1970); Three Plays: The Last Carnival; Beef, No Chicken; and A Branch of the Blue Nile (1969). Derek Walcott teaches creative writing at Boston University every fall and lives the rest of the year in St. Lucia.

[ 本帖最后由 舞者 于 2006-3-29 14:55 编辑 ]

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从这个连接进去，有诸多东西可看。

http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1992/walcott-bio.html



Derek Walcott was born in 1930 in the town of Castries in Saint Lucia, one of the Windward Islands in the Lesser Antilles. The experience of growing up on the isolated volcanic island, an ex-British colony, has had a strong influence on Walcott's life and work. Both his grandmothers were said to have been the descendants of slaves. His father, a Bohemian watercolourist, died when Derek and his twin brother, Roderick, were only a few years old. His mother ran the town's Methodist school. After studying at St. Mary's College in his native island and at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, Walcott moved in 1953 to Trinidad, where he has worked as theatre and art critic. At the age of 18, he made his debut with 25 Poems, but his breakthrough came with the collection of poems, In a Green Night (1962). In 1959, he founded the Trinidad Theatre Workshop which produced many of his early plays.

Walcott has been an assiduous traveller to other countries but has always, not least in his efforts to create an indigenous drama, felt himself deeply-rooted in Caribbean society with its cultural fusion of African, Asiatic and European elements. For many years, he has divided his time between Trinidad, where he has his home as a writer, and Boston University, where he teaches literature and creative writing.

From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1991-1995, Editor Sture Allén, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 1997

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les Prix Nobel/Nobel Lectures. The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.