Derek Walcott was born in St.Lucia in 1930. He was educated at St.Mary´s College and The University of the West Indies. He has taught at the universities of Columbia, Yale and Harvard.

Currently, he is Professor of English at Boston University, where he teaches writing courses in poetry and drama. Among his many plays are Dream on Monkey Mountain ( for which he won an off- Broadway award ), Pantomine and The Odyssey. His Collected Poems 1948-1984 was published in 1986 and The Arkansas Testament in 1987.

He was awarded the Queen´s Medal for poetry in 1988, and the Nobel prize for Literature in 1992. Omeros won the W.H. Smith Literary Award in 1990. He divides his time between Boston and the Caribbean.