Auto/Biography

“Because I had been christened a prodigy, I couldn’t endure failure…”[1]

---Derek Walcott

Derek Walcott was born to a painter and a headmistress on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, entitled “The Helen of the West,” in 1930. [2] His father died one year later leaving Derek, his twin brother, Roderick, and an older sister.

Derek was raised a member of a religious minority and was tutored under the close friends of his late father. He was inspired to paint and write partly because of these influences.

He published his first poem at the age of fourteen in a local newspaper. He borrowed $200 from his mother to publish his first book of poetry, 25 Poems, at the age of 18 and sold it on the streets of St. Lucia himself. From those beginnings, he founded an arts guild, a theater, wrote plays, essays and poems, newspaper articles, reviews, took a degree, married three times, traveled the world, won a nobel prize, and kept writing and painting and writing and writing and writing .[4] His prolific body of work is almost as overwhelming to summarize as it is to read.

1944: “1944” published in The Voice of St. Lucia
1948: 25 Poems
1949: Epitaph for the Young
1951: Poems
1954: Premiere of The Sea at Dauphin
1958: Premiere of Drums and Colours and Ti-Jean and His Brothers
1959: Premiere of Malcochon
1960-1962: Feature writer, Trinidad Guardian
1963-68: Drama Critic, later freelance writer, Trinidad Guardian
1964: Publication of Selected Poems
1965: Publicatio of The Castaway
1967: Premiere of Dream on Monkey Mountain
1968: Publication of The Gulf
1970: Publication of Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays
1973: Publication of Another Life
1974: Premiere of The Joker of Seville
1976: Publication of Sea Grapes. Premiere of O Babylon!, Premiere of Remembrance,
1978: Publication of The Joker of Seville’ and O Babylon! Premiere of Pantomime
1979: Publication of The Star-Apple Kingdom
1980: Publication of Rememberance and Pantomime
1981: Publication of The Fortunate Traveller, Premiere of Beef, No Chicken
1983: Premiere of The Last Carnival, Premiere of A Branch of the Blue Nile
1984: Publication of Midsummer. Premiere of The Haitian Earth to mark the 150^th anniversary of the abolition of slavery.
1986: Publication of Three Plays. Publication of Collected Poems
1987: Publication of The Arkansas Testament
1989: Premiere of The Ghost Dance
1990: Publication of Omeros
1992: Nobel Prize for Literature. Premiere of The Odyssey: A Stage Version
1993: Publication of The Odyssey: A Stage Version. Publication of The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory (The Nobel Lecture). Premiere of Walker
1997: Publication of The Bounty
1998: Publication of What the Twilight Says
2000: Publication of Tiepolo’s Hound
2002: Publication of The Haitian Trilogy. Publication of Walker and The Ghost Dance
2004: Publication of The Prodigal
2007: Publication of Selected Poems

---

[1] Hamner, Robert D., ed. Critical Perspectives on Derek Walcott. Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, Inc., 1993, 25. This is taken from an essay written by Walcott entitled, “Leaving School.”

[2] Ibid, 25-26.

[3] Ibic, 26-27.

[4] Baugh, Edward. Derek Walcott. Cambridge Studies in African and Caribbean Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Chronology listed on pages ix-xii.