Edward Alston Cecil Baugh (born 10 January 1936) is a Jamaican poet and scholar, recognised as an authority on the work of Derek Walcott

Derek Walcott

Derek Alton Walcott, OBE OCC is a Saint Lucian poet, playwright, writer and visual artist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992 and the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2011 for White Egrets. His works include the Homeric epic Omeros...

.

He was born in Port Antonio

Port Antonio

Port Antonio is the capital of the parish of Portland on the northeastern coast of Jamaica, about 60 miles from Kingston. It had a population of 12,285 in 1982 and 13,246 in 1991...

, Jamaica, and began writing poetry at Titchfield High School. He won a scholarship to study English literature at the University College of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica

Mona, Jamaica

Mona is a neighbourhood in southeastern Saint Andrew Parish, approximately five miles from Kingston, Jamaica. A former sugar plantation, it is the site of a reservoir serving the city of Kingston and of the main campus of the University of the West Indies...

, and later did his postgraduate studies at Queen's University in Ontario and the University of Manchester

University of Manchester

The University of Manchester is a public research university located in Manchester, United Kingdom. It is a "red brick" university and a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive British universities and the N8 Group...

, where he earned a Ph.D. in 1964. He taught at the Cave Hill

Cave Hill

-Barbados:* Cave Hill can refer to two areas, located on the island-nation of Barbados. For one of the main campuses of the University of the West Indies located at Cave Hill, St. Michael see below.The Cave Hill are in Barbados can refer to:...

 campus of the University of the West Indies

University of the West Indies

The University of the West Indies , is an autonomous regional institution supported by and serving 17 English-speaking countries and territories in the Caribbean: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Dominica,...

from 1965 to 1967, then at the university's Mona campus from 1968 to 2001, eventually being appointed professor of English in 1978 and public orator in 1985.

Scholarly works

His scholarly publications include West Indian Poetry 1900-1970: A Study in Cultural Decolonisation (1971); Critics on Caribbean Literature (1978); Derek Walcott: Memory as Vision (1978), the first book-length study of Walcott's work; and an annotated edition of Walcott’s Another Life (2004), with Colbert Nepaulsingh. Chancellor, I Present (1998) collects a number of the addresses Baugh delivered as UWI's public orator on the occasion of the presentation on honorary degrees.

Poetry

Baugh's poems appeared in various magazines and anthologies years before the publication of his first collection, A Tale from the Rainforest (1988). This was followed by It Was the Singing (2000).