Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on November 20, 2002.

Derek Walcott was born in St. Lucia, West Indies, in 1930, and educated at the University of the West Indies. After university, he was awarded a fellowship by the Rockefeller Foundation to study American theater. A poet, playwright, and essayist, his creative works are informed by Caribbean, English and African traditions.

He has been honored with awards and prizes in each of those disciplines including the Queen’s Medal for Poetry, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, an Obie in 1971 for his play, Dream on Monkey Mountain which deals with a man’s search for cultural identity in the face of colonialism, and in 1992, the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Mr. Walcott teaches poetry and playwriting during the fall semester at Boston University and lives in St. Lucia.

You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website.