Friday, October 10, 2008

Nobel Prize Winner and VR-descendant Derek Walcott (78) opens the Cola-Debrot Seminar in Amsterdam The Netherlands and Working on Opera in UK!



We still haven't been in touch with Derek Walcott. We respect that he is not interested in our research but we are proud of all descendants and their achievements in the field they love most.

Derek Walcott ( 1930) theatre writer and Noble Prize winner of literature 1992 was recently invited by the study group Caribbean Literature for the first Cola Debrot Seminar in the aula of the University of Amsterdam which took place on
May, 20 2008 and was the first keynote speaker for the cycle of seminars of the study group. The Cola Debrot seminar will take place every 2 years in Amsterdam the Netherlands and is dedicated to Caribbean Literature.

As many of us know Divine Love is the light of this research and you see again how God works and synchronizes everything to each other. Derek was invited as the keynote speaker at the Cola Debrot Seminar in Amsterdam The Netherlands. Our forefather Diederik Johannes van Romondt was born and raised in Amsterdam The Netherlands and sailed in 1800 to the island of Sint Maarten N.A. where today we can stand together as descendants of the West Indian Branch of the van Romondt family.



Not only in The Netherlands people admire the work of Derek Walcott also in the UK. The newspaper the Guardian (p12) wrote on Saturday October 4, 2008 in the section Features & Reviews an article ' A life in writing: Derek Walcott.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/oct/04/poetry.derekwalcott

And also Derek St. Lucia-born Walcott, who captured the prize in 1992, together with Nobel winners Heaney on the work Antigone opera. Heaney, who won the Nobel in 1995 and Derek, are old friends. "[This piece] offers a rare opportunity for a work of considerable importance and beauty to be seen and heard," said Walcott, 78. The opera will premiere on Oct. 11 and go on a national tour. http://www.cbc.ca/arts/theatre/story/2008/07/13/walcott-heaney-opera.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/10/09/bmwalcott109.xml

The van Romondt Family Tree West Indian Branch Research Project congratulate Derek Walcott for his recent achievement and hope one day he can open is heart to us! We are very proud to have a descendant well known in the world and who is doing a great job!



Who is Derek Walcott?
Derek Alton Walcott (born January 23, 1930) is a West Indies poet, playwright, writer and visual artist who writes mainly in English. Born in Castries, St. Lucia, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992.
His work, which developed independently of the schools of magic realism emerging in both South America and Europe at around the time of his birth, is intensely related to the symbolism of myth and its relationship to culture. He is best known for his epic poem Omeros, a reworking of Homeric story and tradition into a journey around the Caribbean and beyond to the American West and London. Walcott founded the Trinidad Theatre Workshop in 1959, which has produced his plays (and others) since that time, and remains active with its Board of Directors. He also founded Boston Playwrights' Theatre at Boston University in 1981 with the hope of creating a home for new plays in Boston, Massachusetts. Walcott continues to teach poetry and drama in the Creative Writing Department at Boston University and gives readings and lectures throughout the world. He divides his time between his home in the Caribbean and New York City.

Read more:http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1992/walcott-bio.html

A little of Derek's family?
As a young man, Warwick [Derek's father] worked as a copyist at the Education Office. (Subsequently, he worked for St. Lucia's Attorney General and Acting Chief Justice.) At night and on weekends, Warwick painted, read Shakespeare and Dickens, and gathered around him like-minded friends, who put on amateur theatricals. One of the members of this group, which Warwick christened the Star Literary Club, was Alix Maarlin [subsequently Derek's mother], the daughter of Johannes van Romondt, a white estate owner on St. Maarten, and Caroline Maarlin, a brown woman. Alix had moved to St. Lucia as a young girl, apparently to finish her schooling. Her guardian, a Dutch trader, was part of a small clan who helped establish the Methodist presence on St. Lucia. Alix, too, practiced Methodism, which was practically a cult on the Catholic-dominated island. Many of my paternal ancestors were prominent Methodists in the Caribbean. It's amusing to think that they were at the centre of a "cult". It explains a lot!

Read more of the Cola Debrot Seminar in Amsterdam The Netherlands:

http://www.cms.uva.nl/spui25/archief.cfm/E7DA550C-1321-B0BE-A428656FF8A354BC

http://antilliaans.caribiana.nl/cultuur/car20080521_Walcott

http://www.amsterdamwereldboekenstad.nl/index.cfm?page=agenda&aid=316

Cola Debrot:
Cola (Nicolaas) Debrot (1902-1981) was a writer, lawyer, medical doctor and politician active in Curacao. He laid the foundations of Dutch-Antillian literature. His debut Mijn zuster de negerin (1935) is best-known. Cola Debrot has also been active as a politician. He was the first Governor of the Netherlands Antilles who was born on one of the islands (1962-1970).

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