St Lucian writer, poet, and playwright. His work fuses Caribbean and European, classical and contemporary elements, and deals with the divisions within colonial society and his own search for cultural identity. His works include the long poem
Omeros (1990) and his adaptation of Homer's
Odyssey for the stage (1992); his
Collected Poems were published in 1986. His biography of French impressionist painter Pissarro,
Tiepolo's Hound, was published in 2000. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992.
Walcott was educated at the University of the West Indies. He has taught writing at the universities of Columbia, Yale, and Harvard. He contributed greatly to the development of an indigenous West Indian theatre, and for 25 years ran a theatre in Trinidad. Other plays include
Dream on Monkey Mountain (1970),
O Babylon! (1978), and
Remembrance (1980). His collection of poetry
The Bounty appeared in 1997.
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