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Nobel Prize Winner comes to OSU
West Indies native and 1992 Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott speaks at Ohio Union

By Robert Taylor Jr.
DIMENSIONS Staff Writer

Ohio State sophomore Ayana Wilson recently saw the man of her dreams.

"He's just the most amazing writer I've ever encountered," Wilson remarked about Derek Walcott, who won the 1992 Nobel Prize for Literature. "His writings are so alive, and it's really inspirational to me," she said.

Walcott read excerpts of his poetry to roughly 250 people in the Ohio Union's East Ballroom Nov. 10. The event was sponsored by the Ohio Union Activities Board, Honors and Scholars Center, Minority Affairs Retention Services, Theater Department, Wexner Center, and the OSU Creative Writing program.

Walcott, 69, was born in St. Lucia, West Indies, and had an intuition to write. He often wrote about his life and the three unique situations which composed it - the Caribbean (where he was raised), the English language, and his African origin. Those situations (along with his mother being white and father being black) translated into an enormous amount of poems, including his largest collection of poetry, Collected Poems 1948-1984. That compilation takes one through Walcott's life from an early adult in the West Indies to his later years when he moved to Trinidad, his current residence.

Wilson, 20, a native of Trinidad and an aspiring writer, said people in her native country with aspirations of becoming a writer, much less having the prominence and success of Walcott, are taken with a grain of salt. Expectations are more like performing a trade, like locksmiths, or field work.

"He's an inspiration to me because he showed he could make it," Wilson said. "I want to be a Nobel Prize winner just like him."

After studying at the University of the West Indies (Jamaica) and St. Mary's College in Maryland, Walcott moved to Trinidad in 1953, where he worked as a theatre and art critic. In 1948, he debuted with the collection 25 Poems; since, he has released collections like In a Green Night (1962), Sea Grapes (1976), The Fortunate Traveller (1981), The Arkansas Testament (1987) and Omeros (1990).

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Walcott also won the Queens Medal for Poetry in 1988. He currently teaches creative writing at Boston University in Massachusetts.


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Jan. 2000