West Indian dramatist and poet Derek Walcott, winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature, is expected to appear at a colloquium to be held in Tainan City tomorrow, the National Museum of Taiwanese Literature reported yesterday.
Walcott, who was born in Castries, St. Lucia in 1930 to a British father and a West Indian mother, will attend the colloquium titled: "Poetry, Language and Identity," to be sponsored by the National Museum of Taiwanese Literature with various local poets, academics and literati also taking part.
It is hoped that Walcott, who skillfully fuses folk island culture with the classical and avant-garde in his poems, will be inspirational to Taiwan's literary circles at a time when Taiwan is enthusiastically promoting maritime culture, a museum spokesman said.
Walcott also visited Taiwan in 2002, when he was the focus of a week of readings, discussions and lectures.
Walcott, who from the age of eight envisaged becoming a poet, published his first poem at 14 and had his first verse collection printed by the time he was 18.
Walcott, who divides his time between the US and Trinidad, exalts in the English language with his meticulously honed poems and evocative dramas, while also using a rich mix of Latin, French and Trinidadian patois.
In addition to poems and verse, Walcott also writes plays and epic poems. His 1990 epic poem Omeros, which echoes Homer's Iliad and Odyssey as it examines the Caribbean's colonial past and complex present, won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992.
Often focusing on West Indian folk traditions, Walcott's plays include Dream on Monkey Mountain (1970), The Joker of Seville (1975), A Branch of the Blue Nile (1986), while his verse collections include In a Green Night (1962), the autobiographical Another Life (1973), Sea Grapes (1976) and Midsummer (1984).
Professor Xi Mi from the University of California in Los Angeles will be the host of the colloquium, while Taiwan poets Lee Kuei-hsien and Lee Min-yung, and professor Tseng Chen-chen of National Dong Hwa University and Lin Jui-ming, director of the National Museum of Taiwanese Literature, will join Walcott for the discussion, according to the museum spokesman.
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