Derek Walcott, the 1992 Nobel Prize winner in Literature, is in the middle of a three-week residency at Gustavus Adolphus College as part of the Rydell Professorship program.
Walcott, a native of the island of St. Lucia, went on to have a distinguished teaching career at Boston University. He has written more than 20 plays, but is best known for his epic poem, Omeros. Walcott has also published more than 20 volumes of poetry and has won many awards including a Royal Society of Literature Award, the Queen’s Medal for Poetry, and a fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation.
The Rydell Professorship is a scholar-in-residence program designed to bring Nobel laureates and similarly distinguished scholars to the Gustavus campus as catalysts for enhancing learning and teaching. It was established in 1995 by Drs. Robert E. and Susan T. Rydell of Minnetonka, Minn., to give students the opportunity to learn from and interact with leading scholars.
The following video is footage shot on Monday, Sept. 27 when Mr. Walcott read from several of his poems and the College conferred an honorary degree upon him.
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