MPR’s Kitty Eisele reports on announcement of poet Derek Walcott as winner of Nobel Prize for Literature. Segment includes brief interview with Walcott.

Transcript:

(00:00:00) The prestigious Nobel Prize for literature was announced today poet Derek Walcott was named the 1992 Laureate by the Swedish Academy and Minnesota public radio's Arts producer Kitty Isley joins us with more Kitty. Hi Gary at six o'clock this morning Derek Walcott got the phone call that few people are ever anticipating the 62 year old poet from Trinidad learned. He had won the Nobel Prize in literature Walcott was already at work writing in his Boston home when he received the call from the Nobel Committee in Stockholm. Derek Walcott was born in the Caribbean in 1930 on the island of st. Lucia. And for most of his early life Saint Lucia was still a colony under the British flag, and the influence of those mixed cultures is present in wolcott's work in its citation the Nobel committee set of the writer. He has both African and European blood in his veins in him West Indian culture has found its great poet Walcott said his first reaction to the award was complete surprise
(00:00:55) happy if a friend of mine Seamus Heaney and Testing and writer vs. Naipaul had been given the award because it's equally deserving. Since its since
(00:01:04) his childhood Derek Walcott says he has wanted to be a writer. He published his first book of poems when he was only 18 years old since that time he's issued nearly two dozen books of poetry and plays including an epic work in 1990 a 64 chapter poem titled. Oh marrows the Swedish is set. He was me and the Swedish Academy said in that book Wolcott draws on influences as wide-ranging as Homer Melville and the Beatles although Derek Walcott teaches in this country at Boston University his native Caribbean. Exerts a strong hold he returns there frequently and said he hoped to use some of his Nobel winnings to purchase a house and studio in Saint Lucia. The Nobel Prize comes after a long list of honours for Walcott. He won an Obie award for his playwriting and in the 1980s received a prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, but the Nobel Prize which carries with it a 1.2 million dollar award. Wolcott says distinguishes both writer and region
(00:01:58) writing a long time and what it does. Is it recognizes? The you know, the effort of Western Electric try to articulate itself
(00:02:08) Walcott will accept his prize from the Swedish Academy at a ceremony in Stockholm in December and a note of local interest writers in Minnesota might know Wolcott from his time at as a mentor in the writing program at the Loft in 1988. So he was here he was here for I'm not sure month and month and a half. So there may be writers. We can dig up who have some memories of him. Great. Thanks Kitty. Thank you, Gary.