From St Lucia Derek Alton Walcott published his first poem in a local newspaper at the age of 14, and went on to study at St. Mary’s College, and The University College of the West Indies in Jamaica, where he studied languages. His first collection, titled 25 Poems was released in 1948 when he was 18 years old, and was self distributed on street corners. Briefly working as a teacher
Speaking English and French Creole, his work is a cross-cultural stew, often combining Caribbean poetics, patois and the African storytelling tradition with European forms such as the classical mode of the Epic, and the style of the modernist English poets Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. Using fables, folktales and allegory, his poetry is one of symbolism, symbiosis and playful assimilation, mixing local Creole language with English dialect. This bilingual interplay of pan-national idioms and cultural identities has led to Walcott describing himself as ‘a mulatto of style’.
