(born Jan. 23, 1930, Castries, Saint Lucia) West Indian poet and playwright. Walcott was educated in Saint Lucia and Jamaica, and after 1958 he lived in Trinidad and the U.S. Many of his works explore the Caribbean cultural experience.
He is best known for his poetry; in volumes such as In a Green Night (1962), The Gulf (1969), Another Life (1973), The Star-Apple Kingdom (1979), The Fortunate Traveller (1981), and The Bounty (1997), Walcott's erudition is submerged in sweeping rhythmic and sensuous sonorities. His epic poem Omeros (1990) is a retelling of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey in a 20th-century Caribbean setting. Tiepolo's Hound (2000) is a poetic biography of West Indian-born French painter Camille Pissarro. Of Walcott's approximately 30 plays, the best-known are Ti-Jean and His Brothers (1958), Dream on Monkey Mountain (produced 1967), and Pantomime (1978). In 1992 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
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