Alastair Reid
- (born 1926 - ) - Whithorn, Galloway
Poet, essayist and translator, Alastair Reid was born in 1926 in Whithorn in Wigtownshire. After serving in the Royal Navy during WWII, he studied at St Andrews University. He was first published as a poet in 1951 with the New Yorker magazine, and has contributed many poets, reviews and reports for the magazine since then. A student of South American literature, he has translated the works of authors such as Pablo Neruda and Jose Emilio Pacheco.
His own collections of poetry include Oasis, published in 1997, as well as earlier books such as Whereabouts, To Lighten My House and Weathering. He has published over 40 books.
As a professor of literature, he has taught Latin American Literature in Spain, Switzerland, France, Greece, Morocco and across South America. Reid is actively involved in the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the Wigtown Book Town projects.
Bibliography
- To Lighten My House - 1953
- Allth - 1958
- Ounce, dice, trice - 1958
- I Will Tell You of a Town - 1959
- Oddments, inklings, omens, moments: poems - 1960
- Passwords: places, poems, preoccupations - 1964
- We Are Many by Pablo Neruda (translator) - 1967
- A New Decade: poems 1958-1967 by Pablo Neruda (translator with Ben Belitt) - 1969
- Extravagaria by Pablo Neruda (translator) - 1972
- Fully Empowered by Pablo Neruda (translator) - 1976
- Don't Ask Me How the Time Goes By: poems 1964-1968 by Jose Emilio Pacheco (translator) - 1978
- Weathering: poems and translations - 1978
- Isla Negra: a notebook by Pablo Neruda (translator) - 1982
- Legacies: selected poems by Heberto Padilla (translator with Andrew Hurley) - 1982
- Whereabouts - 1987
- Pablo Neruda: Absence and Presence by Luis Poirot (translator) - 1990
- An Alastair Reid Reader: selected prose and poetry - 1994
- Oases: poems and prose - 1997
- Digging Up Scotland: Edinburgh International Book Festival -2002
- On the Blue Shore of Silence: Poems of the Sea by Pablo Neruda (translator) - 2004