Nobel laureate’s lyrical poems celebrated joys of Caribbean
CASTRIES, St. Lucia — Derek Walcott, a Nobelprize winning poet known for capturing the essence of his native Caribbean, has died on the island of St. Lucia. He was 87.
Mr. Walcott’s death in the eastern Caribbean nation was first confirmed early Friday by his son, Peter.
“Derek Alton Walcott, poet, playwright, and painter died peacefully today, Friday 17th March, 2017, at his home in Cap Estate, Saint Lucia,” read a family statement released later in the morning. It said the funeral would be held in St. Lucia.
The prolific and versatile poet received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1992 after being shortlisted for the honor for many years. In selecting Mr. Walcott, the academy cited the great luminosity” of his writings including the 1990 “Omeros,” a 64-chapter Caribbean epic it praised as “majestic.”
“In him, West Indian culture has found its great poet,” said the Swedish academy in awarding the $1.2 million prize to Mr. Walcott.
St. Lucia Prime Minister Allen Chastanet said flags throughout the island would be lowered to half-staff to honor Mr. Walcott, one of the most renowned figures to emerge from the small country.
“It is a great loss to Saint Lucia,” he said. “It is a great loss to the world.”
Mr. Walcott, who was of African, Dutch and English ancestry, said his writing reflected the “very rich and complicated experience” of life in the Caribbean. His dazzling, painterly work earned him a reputation as one of the greatest writers of the second half of the 20th century.
With passions ranging from watercolor painting to teaching to theater, Mr. Walcott work was widely praised for its depth and bold use of metaphor, and its mix of sensuousness and technical prowess. He compared his feeling for poetry to a religious avocation.
Soviet exile poet Joseph Brodsky, who won the Nobel literature prize in 1987, once complained that some critics relegated Mr. Walcott to regional status because of “an unwillingness ... to admit that the great poet of the English language is a black man.”
Mr. Walcott himself proudly celebrated his role as a Caribbean writer.
“I am primarily, absolutely a Caribbean writer,” he once said during a 1985 interview published in the Paris Review. “The English language is nobody’s special property.”
Mr. Walcott was born in St. Lucia’s capital of Castries on Jan. 23, 1930 to a Methodist schoolteacher mother and a civil servant father, an aspiring artist who died when Mr. Walcott and his twin brother, Roderick, were babies. His mother, Alix, instilled the love of language in her children, often reciting Shakespeare and reading aloud other classics.