Dennis Scott

Dennis Courtney Scott was born on the sixteenth of December 1939 at Kingston, Jamaica, the son of a Jamaican Black middle-class family of the principal late-colonial Kingston-Saint Andrew community. He was raised in the principal Kingston Black middle-class community of the late-colonial Jamaican period.

He completed his secondary education at Jamaica College at Kingston in 1958 — and the bachelor's degree at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica in 1968 in the principal English and Caribbean-literature programme under Edward Kamau Brathwaite (placed in this archive).

He worked across the early 1960s as a Jamaican secondary-school teacher of English and drama — at the Kingston College and at the Excelsior High School — and was named in 1968 the principal Jamaica School of Drama drama-and-poetry instructor at the principal Cultural Training Centre at Kingston.

He published his first poetic volume Journeys and Ceremonies at the Sangster's Bookstores Press at Kingston in 1969 — and his second poetic volume Uncle Time at the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1973. Uncle Time won the principal Commonwealth Poetry Prize at the principal first Commonwealth Poetry Prize awards in 1974.

He published his third poetic volume Dreadwalk: Poems 1970-1978 at the New Beacon Books at London in 1982 — the principal post-Rastafari Jamaican poetic volume of the principal post-1972 Jamaican literary tradition. The Dreadwalk volume was the principal first Jamaican poetic volume to incorporate the principal Rastafarian theological-and-iyaric-language poetic register at the post-1970 Jamaican post-Rastafari literary period.

He was named the principal director of the Jamaica School of Drama at the Cultural Training Centre at Kingston in 1977 — and held the principal Jamaica School of Drama directorship from 1977 to 1983.

He was named the principal associate professor of theatre at Yale University School of Drama at New Haven, Connecticut in 1983 — and held the principal Yale Drama School position from 1983 to 1991.

He was a principal director of the principal post-1965 American post-Off-Broadway Black-Caribbean-American theatrical tradition — including the principal premieres of approximately fifteen plays of the Caribbean-American playwright Derek Walcott across the 1980s in New York and at the principal Trinidad Theatre Workshop at Port of Spain.

He died at New Haven, Connecticut on the twenty-first of February 1991 of complications of a heart attack, at fifty-one.

He is honored here as the author of Uncle Time and Dreadwalk.