Derek Walcott in France in 1993.

  1930: Derek Walcott is born on January 23 in Castries, Saint Lucia; he has a twin brother, Roderick, and an elder sister, Pamela.

  1931: Warwick Walcott dies, leaving Alix Walcott to take care of the three children alone.

 1940s: Walcott becomes friends with Dunstan St Omer and Harold Simmons

  1944: Walcott publishes the poem “1944” in the Voice of St Lucia, the local newspaper.

  1947: Walcott graduates from St Mary’s College and joins the teaching staff for two years.

  1948: Alix Walcott gives her son $200 for him to self-publish his first two books.

  1950: Walcott cofounds the St Lucia Arts Guild.

1950-3: Walcott studies English, French and Latin at the University College of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. The university’s Dramatic Society produces several of his plays.

  1953: Walcott is hired as a theatre and art critic at the Jamaican newspaper Public Opinion.

  1954: Walcott marries Faye Moyston. The marriage produces one son: Peter.

  1958: Walcott writes Drums and Colours: An Epic Drama for the inauguration of the West Indian Federation. The same year, he earns a fellowship to study theatre in New York City for a year.

  1959: Walcott and Faye Moyston divorce. The same year, he moves to Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago: he works as a literature and arts critic for the newspaper Trinidad Guardian and founds the Trinidad Theatre Workshop with his twin brother Roderick.

  1962: Walcott marries Margaret Ruth Maillard; the marriage produces two daughters: Elizabeth (born in 1964) and Anna (born in 1968). The same year, In a Green Night: Poems 1948–1960 is published by Jonathan Cape in London.

  1964: Walcott’s collection Selected Poems is published by the Farrar, Straus and Giroux in New York City.

  1970: An attempted coup fails in Trinidad and Tobago in February. The same year, Walcott’s play Dream on Monkey Mountain is produced for the first time. He also writes the essay “What the Twilight Says: An Overture”.

  1972: Walcott is appointed to the Order of the British Empire as a reward for his work.

  1973: Walcott publishes the autobiographical poem Another Life.

  1976: Walcott and Margaret Ruth Maillard divorce. He leaves Trinidad and Tobago the same year.

  1977: Walcott becomes friends with Joseph Brodsky and Seamus Heaney.

  1980: Walcott moves to the United States; he teaches at Columbia University, Yale, Harvard, and finally settles in Boston, where he starts teaching creative writing at Boston University. He founds the Boston Playwright’s Theatre.

  1982:  Walcott marries Norline Metivier.

  1989:  Walcott is presented with the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry; he is the first Commonwealth writer to be granted the award.

  1990:  Walcott publishes Omeros. His mother, Alix, dies the same year.

  1992: Walcott receives the Nobel Prize for literature in Stockholm. The Royal Shakespeare Company presents Walcott’s The Odyssey: A Stage Version in Stratford-upon-Avon and London.

  1993:  Walcott and Norline Metivier divorce.

  1996:  Walcott becomes Professor of Poetry at the University of Essex.

  2000:  Walcott publishes Tiepolo’s Hound, a poetic biography of Camille Pisarro.

  2017: Walcott dies at his home in Saint Lucia on 17 March at the age of 87 and receives a state funeral.

Works by Derek Walcott

Poetry collections

1948: 25 Poems

1949: Epitaph for the Young: Xll Cantos

1951: Poems

1962: In a Green Night: Poems 1948-60

1964: Selected Poems

1965: The Castaway and Other Poems

1969: The Gulf and Other Poems

1973: Another Life

1976: Sea Grapes

1979: The Star-Apple Kingdom

1981: Selected Poetry

1981: The Fortunate Traveller

1983: The Caribbean Poetry of Derek Walcott and the Art of Romare Bearden

1984: Midsummer

1986: Collected Poems, 1948–1984

1987: The Arkansas Testament

1990: Omeros

1997: The Bounty

2000: Tiepolo’s Hound

2004: The Prodigal

2007: Selected Poems

2010: White Egrets

2014: The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948–2013

2016: Morning, Paramin

Plays

1950: Henri Christophe: A Chronicle in Seven Scenes

1952: Harry Dernier: A Play for Radio Production

1953: Wine of the Country

1954: The Sea at Dauphin: A Play in One Act

1957: Ione

1958: Drums and Colours: An Epic Drama

1958: Ti-Jean and His Brothers

1966: Malcochon: or, Six in the Rain

1967: Dream on Monkey Mountain

1970: In a Fine Castle

1974: The Joker of Seville

1974: The Charlatan

1976: O Babylon!

1977: Remembrance

1978: Pantomime

1980: The Joker of Seville and O Babylon!: Two Plays

1982: The Isle Is Full of Noises

1984: The Haitian Earth

1986: Three Plays: The Last Carnival, Beef, No Chicken, and a Branch of the Blue Nile

1991: Steel

1993: Odyssey: A Stage Version

1997: The Capeman

2002: Walker and The Ghost Dance

2011: Moon-Child

2014: O Starry Starry Night

Other books

1990: The Poet in the Theatre

1993: The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory

1996: Conversations with Derek Walcott

1996: Homage to Robert Frost

1998: What the Twilight Says (with Seamus Heaney and Joseph Brodsky)

2002: Walker and Ghost Dance

2004: Another Life: Fully Annotated