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Poets'
A-Z » Alastair
Reid
Alastair Reid was born in 1926 in Galloway, and graduated
from the University of St Andrews after war service in the
navy. He has lived in Spain, France, Switzerland, the United
States, and Central and South America, working as poet, translator
and champion of South American literature, staff writer and
South American editor of The New Yorker.
His collection of prose and poetry, Oases (Canongate,
1997) includes an extended essay on Neruda and Borges, describing
his friendship and work with Neruda: ‘Once, in Paris,
while I was explaining some liberty I had taken, he stopped
me and put his hand on my shoulder. “Alastair, don’t
just translate my poems. I want you to improve them.”’
Alastair Reid’s collections include Whereabouts
(1987), Weathering (1978) and To Lighten My House
(1953). On the Blue Shore of Silence (HarperCollins,
2004) is a new selection of his translations of Neruda’s
poems of the sea.
  
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