Nobel laureate Derek Walcott dies at 87

ASTANA. KAZINFORM - Derek Walcott, a Nobel-prize winning poet and playwright died at the age of 87, RBK reports citing the Associated Press.

Walcott died early Friday at his home in the eastern Caribbean nation of St. Lucia, according to his son, Peter.

Wolcott won a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992. "In him, West Indian culture has found its great poet," said the academy in awarding the prize to Walcott..

Walcott, who was of African, Dutch and English ancestry, said his writing reflected the "very rich and complicated experience" of life in the Caribbean. His dazzling, painterly work earned him a reputation as one of the greatest writers of the second half of the 20th century.

Walcott was born in St. Lucia's capital of Castries on Jan. 23, 1930 to a Methodist schoolteacher mother and a civil servant father, an aspiring artist who died when Walcott and his twin brother, Roderick, were babies. His mother, Alix, instilled the love of language in her children, often reciting Shakespeare and reading aloud other classics of English literature.