our sense of belongingness
to multiple cultures. And it is this cultural
cosmopolitanism, or multiple cultural belongingness
that we will study today with reference to
Derek Walcott and his poetry. First, let me
introduce Walcott to you before we go on to
discuss his poetry.
Walcott won the Nobel prize in literature
in 1992. And he was born in the Caribbean
island of Saint Lucia in 1930. And is renowned
worldwide both as a poet and as a playwright.
And he has been a prolific author, known both
for his ability to produce epic poems like
Omeros, for instance, but also for his ability
to write shorter verses, very powerful shorter
verses.
And as a dramatist he is perhaps the most
well-known for his play, Dream on Monkey Mountain,
which was first produced in 1970. Now, to
understand the notion of cultural cosmopolitanism
and how it operates inthe Spanish
empire in this part of the World was followed
by the coming in of the British, and the French
Colonisers, and the Dutch colonisers, they
brought to the Caribbean millions and millions
of slaves and indentured labourers, from distant
parts of the world, like Africa for instance,
or India, and thereby changing the entire
demographic profile of these islands.
The Caribbeans is therefore a space which
do not retain much of the traces of its original
inhabitants and their cultures, but which
is nevertheless a huge melting pot of different
people, from different parts of the world,
different languages and different cultures.
So, on the one hand, the original cultural
template was scrubbed clean almost by the
Spanish conquistadors.
But, on the other hand, Caribbean island as
a location, where various different people,
with various different cultures from different
parts of the world came together, made Caribbean,
a