Dream on Monkey Mountain | Author Biography

Derek Walcott was born on January 23, 1930, in Castries, St. Lucia, the West Indies. He and his twin brother, Roderick, were the sons of Warwick and Alix Walcott. Warwick Walcott, a painter, poet, and civil servant, died when the twins were one year old. The boys and their elder sister were raised by their mother, a teacher who also supported her family by working as a seamstress. In this middle-class Protestant family, literature and artistry were emphasized.

Derek Walcott
Derek Walcott

Like his father, Walcott wanted to become a painter. While he painted his whole life, Walcott's primary focus became words, in English, instead of images while a teenager. Attending St. Mary's College on St. Lucia, Walcott became a poet. Before entering the university, he self-published his first book of poetry at the age of eighteen, entitled 25 Poems. He borrowed the money to publish it from his mother, and made the money back by selling it himself.

In 1949, Walcott entered the University of the West Indies on Trinidad, from which he graduated in 1953 with a B.A. Even before graduation, Walcott began a teaching career, which he has continued to pursue on the secondary and university levels. While still a student, Walcott also began writing plays. His first was Henri Christophe (1951). In both his poetry and plays, Walcott often deals with the racial complexities of the West Indian islands and his own racial heritage. His two grandfathers were white, while both of his grandmothers were black and descendants of slaves.

Walcott's first successful play was The Sea at Dauphin (1954). This contributed in part to Walcott obtaining a Rockefeller Fellowship to study playwriting and directing in New York City from 1957 to 1958. Upon his return home to Trinidad, in 1959, Walcott founded the Trinidad Theater Workshop, which provided a forum for his plays. For the workshop, Walcott wrote his best-known play, Dream on Monkey Mountain (1967). Other significant titles of his include The Joker of Seville (1974) and O Babylon! (1976).

While Walcott continued to write plays, over the years he became better known for his poetry. His breakthrough collection was 1962's In a Green Night: Poems, 1948-1960, while another important volume was The Castaway and Other Poems (1965). In 1990, Walcott published his poetic masterpiece, Omerus, a 325-page epic poem which gives a Caribbean twist to Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. In 1992, Walcott won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his poetry, one of many honors he has received over his career.

Beginning in the early 1980s, Walcott split his time between teaching literature and creative writing at Boston-area universities and in Trinidad. Though the 1990s, Walcott continued to teach and write (including 1997's collection of poetry The Bounty and The Capeman: The Musical with Paul Simon). He also reestablished his work with the Trinidad Theater Workshop after a decade-long hiatus. Married three times, Walcott has a son and two daughters.