Derek Walcott: 5 things you should know about the late, groundbreaking poet

Nobel Prize-winning poet and playwright Derek Walcott,a major and pivotal figure in post-colonial literature, has died at his home in St. Lucia at the age of 87. Born in Castries, St. Lucia, his early writing often engaged with work by writers such as Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Ezra Pound, among others, but Walcott established his own approach informed by his West Indian background.

During his career, Walcott taught at Yale, Colombia and Rutgers universities and was a scholar in residence at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

Here are five things about the late poet.

He was the first Caribbean writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature

Walcott was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992 for his long poem Omeros. The poem was directly inspired by Homer's Odyssey, however Walcott infused his poem with Caribbean culture and characters. Other accolades includethe T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry for his collectionWhite Egretsin 2011, as well as thePoetry Lifetime Achievement Award by the Griffin Trust in 2015.

Walcott initially trained to be a painter

Under the auspices of celebrated St. Lucian historian and artist Harold Simmons, Walcott was initially training to become a painter. While his professional vocation became literature, Walcott continued to paint, whichfeaturedin his poetry books.

Walcott published his first books as a teenager

After initially publishing his first poem at the age of 14, Walcottwas able to publish two volumes of poetry,25 Poems and Epitaph for the Young: XII Cantos before he turned 20.

In A Green Night was Walcott's breakthrough work

His 1962 poetry collection In A Green Night represented a turning point in his literary career, as it was lauded by North American critics. Walcott went onto publish subsequent volumes of poetry collections from the 1960s onwards to critical acclaim.

Walcott was also an accomplished playwright

Walcott staged his first play in 1950 and after moving from St. Lucia to Trinidad in 1953, heestablished the Trinidad Theatre Workshop. Years later he'd receive a Rockefeller Foundation to study the American theatre and his play Dream on Monkey Mountain won the Obie Award for distinguished foreign play of 1971. One of his plays, The Capeman was a collaboration with musician Paul Simon. Walcott also founded the Boston Playwrights' Theatre at Boston University in 1981, the same year in which he received a MacArthur"Genius"grant.

Del Cowie, q digital staff