Derek Walcott mugged in Paris

PARIS: Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott has cancelled his appearance at a Scottish poetry festival after being mugged in Paris and robbed of his travel and identity papers, festival organisers said yesterday. The Caribbean-born Walcott, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992, was in Paris on a reading tour last week when his bag was stolen, said Brian Johnstone, organiser of the Stanza Poetry Festival in St Andrews, Scotland.

Apart from his possessions being stolen, Walcott was “further encumbered by an injured back,” Johnstone said. Paris police said they had no file on Walcott’s mugging. Walcott, who was billed as the main attraction of the festival that runs from March 18-21, “made the understandable decision to cancel” his trip to Scotland and return home to St Lucia, Johnstone said. The place of Walcott, whose reading was to be the festival’s finale, will be filled by two other award-winning poets, Don Paterson and Simon Armitage.