News > Nobel Laureate Proud of His Caribbean Heritage
Nobel Laureate Proud of His Caribbean Heritage Expressing a distinctive pride in the Caribbean's landscape, character and culture, Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott has suggested that he is repeatedly stunned by the physical beauty of the Caribbean. Mr. Walcott, in town recently for the fourth annual Anatol Rodgers Memorial Lecture Series hosted by The College's School of English Studies, candidly shared his views as he was welcomed to The Bahamas as the first Nobel Laureate for Literature. "Any invitation of this kind from anywhere in the Caribbean is always acceptable to me and delightful. You meet new people and generally the hospitality in the Caribbean everybody knows is competitive," said Mr. Walcott during a welcome at The College's Chapter One Bookstore on Wednesday November 11th. "As the Caribbean develops it becomes more complicated. A lot of questions arise; questions of race, questions of the economy and so on and I've seen a change considerably from when I began as a young writer but I think I have seen a change for the better."  Mr. Walcott's celebrated poems, plays and essays earned him the Nobel Prize in 1992, awarded to the individual who has produced the best and most outstanding body of work in a designated field. Over the years, he has continued to pay homage to the Caribbean both in his written work and in his declarations. "Certain writers see only one thing: poverty degradation and the penalty of history and the landscape doesn't affect them…They prefer that but I don't. There is the other kind of writer who is constantly and repeatedly stunned by the physical beauty of the Caribbean…" Mr. Walcott said of his Caribbean roots. "It's a matter of constancy. I think the entire Caribbean experience has to do with the geography of the Caribbean. I don't think we would have had such good writers if we didn't have a phenomenal landscape behind it." Asked about his motivation, Mr. Walcott added: "I write for the big, fat woman sitting at the back of the theatre laughing like hell." His visit marked an important development for The College of The Bahamas as it seeks to foster a culture of dialogue, debate and understanding. As he officially welcomed Mr. Walcott to The College, College Council Chairman T. Baswell Donaldson said he was pleased that The College had a hand in making Mr. Walcott's visit possible.  The Anatol Rodgers lecture series is named in honour of the late Anatol Rodgers who contributed to the development of education in The Bahamas and who was the third Bahamian and first female principal of The Government High School. The series is supported by private giving from Dr. Jonathan Rodgers and members of the Rodgers family. "The Anatol Rodgers Memorial lecture series was created only a few years ago, designed to provide a forum where Bahamians and visitors could listen to and participate in conversations with notable playwrights, scholars and cultural critics," said Chair, School of English Studies, Dr. Marjorie Brooks-Jones. "We could never have imagined that in the short period of time that our lecture series has existed on a formal basis that within what seems to have been the blink of an eye we would have had the opportunity to welcome our own Caribbean writer and Nobel Laureate." While in The Bahamas, Mr. Walcott was also the keynote speaker at the Construction Seminar 2009 on "The Impact of Foreign Direct Investment on the Development of the Caribbean." 
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