Derek Walcott: An interview by Rose Styron

The author of many plays and volumes of poetry, Derek Walcott was award ed the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992 He lives in Saint Lucia and in Boston. This interview took place January, 1995 at Walcott's studio in Saint Lucia and was broadcast upon Voice of America.

Rose Styron: in the way that let's start at the beginning: sum up me a bit about your arly childhood upon St. Lucia-your first memories, or your parents in this nulti-racial, multi-cultural cluster of islands-where you went to academy andhow you started writing poesy

Derek Walcott: I was born here, not far from where I am now, near the sea, up at Becune Point. I was born in the true small town of Castries, which is the capital of St Lucia. My mother was a gymnasium teacher and a widow. I have a twin brother and a sister.

I think my mother's encouragement obviously, and because of the fact that my father was a painter and an amateur writer and evidently a director of theatricals as well-was true encouraging in terms of our writing. in the way that I owe her that. I mean she was not individual who discouraged it, in place like this where it, you know, conceptually it appear to beed to be crazy to want to be a writer, and particularly a bard and for her that was exquisitely okay, and she is the single who physically, practically, helped me by dint of giving me some money to have my first work printed in Trinidad. I owe my mother for that kind of encouragement.

And of course teachers who were splendid young men who felt that it was consummately okay to want to be a author of poems That's not a common thing, in any region

RS: It's a true uncommon thing, from the author of poemss that I have had conversations with-on this program and everywhere other So you did not have feeling alienated, or different, as they did; you were in result in the mainstream, in your family, if not in school?

Walcott: I'm saying it was not at any time much trouble at any point for me to consider that I was making a certain number of choice that would not be to my or to ether people's benefit. That I am true grateful for.

RS: Were you always aware of and affected with the multiculturalism, with the many races and backgrounds in the Antilles as you present the appearance to be now? It appear to bes to me to be almost your grand theme-in your Nobel ecture upon the Antilles, for instance, you speak of St Jean Perse in Guadaloupe, of his "the swaying palm tree recite by the agency of heart"-Perse was the former Nobelist from this area-and you say the fragrant and privileged rhyme that Perse composed to celebrate his white childhood, and the Indian music behind the graceful young brown archers whom you speak of in Trinidad, in Felicity, as they were recreating the Ramayana there-Trinidad has the same cabbage palms, put against the same sky, and you say, "They pierce me equally." with equal reason is the source of your numbers and of your love for the Antilles, partly its multi-cultural background?

Walcott: No, I think I arrived at that, and I think we, in the Antilles, arrived at that too, politically, because basically the Caribbean, from Cuba down-Cuba of course a little earlier-is basically a feudal setupit was pyramidal, hierarchical, and frankly feudal, because it meant in limits of the land that there were fewer white proprietors with large estates, on which, in the smaller Caribbean, in the inferior Antilles, the working population were principally African-and it's sole when I went to Trinidad I think that I became to the full aware-certainly absolutely more aware-of the complexity and variety of races. In Trinidad, and for us, in a passage that I myself have gone through-which would be the equivalent in boundarys of, if I were dividing my life into political sections, I would say-the childhood would be colonialism, the adolescence might have been adult suffrage, the maturity would be independence, and then perhaps the independence would be chaos, I don't know-the way you perceive when you get to my age.

But anyway, that's a political parallel. in like manner that if a multi-cultural society wasn't there early, I think the explosion of races that I rencountered the mute explosion of different faces that were there in Trinidad, is tremendously exciting, and remains that way to me It is happening more and more in the Caribbean. For instance there are more Syrians here now, there are certainly a scarcely any more Indians, and so upon so that, you know, the mosaic, and the mural, of different faces-that you diocese around you in the Caribbean -wasn't that rich and complicated-it was actual simple at the beginning.

I think the faculty of perception of multiplicity came to me when I got to Trinidad, and that became a tremendous heritage, because it meant that I was exquisitely entitled to study Chinese literature, because there were Chinese in Trinidad. And they are West Indian, and you know, Arabic, and-English obviously, and Spanish, and African-all of those things existed, and they are as plenteous my heritage as, say, the African heritage is.

RS: I know you say that-at least you say single way or another, that "the ideal city is a writer's heaven"-I think you spoke about Trinidad in relation to cities-and cities are also a source of agriculture So what for you would be the ideal city? Is it the city you lay the foundation of in Trinidad? Or have you rest cities in other parts of the world that give you that same feeling? Walcott: I remain a small island lad no matter where I pass And I don't know Europe in the way that every city I go to in Europe draw nears as a total shock of experience in a faculty of perception so that's not an experience that I know, and individual that I'm still, in a faculty of perception afraid of. Like I'm scared of Italy because it might be too overwhelming; I might want to stay there. I was scared of Spain, and now I'm not cowed through Spain, and love it true much.