The Writers of Wales Database

GUEST, HARRY

1 Alexandra Terrace, Exeter, Devonshire, EX4 6SY
Tel: (01392) 257142

Poet, novelist and translator. Born in Penarth in 1932, Harry has lived in Connecticut, Paris and Tokyo. He read Modern Languages at Cambridge University and also studied at the Sorbonne, before teaching French and German at Felsted and Lancing. He then took up a lectureship in English Literature at Yokohama National University. Harry is an Honorary Research Fellow of Exeter University and in 1998 was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Plymouth. His radio plays, The Inheritance and The Emperor of Outer Space (Pig Press, 1983) were broadcast on BBC Radio 3. His collection A House Against the Night (Anvil, 1976) was a Poetry Book Society recommendation and The Distance, The Shadows (Anvil, 2002) (translations of Victor Hugo) won an honorable mention in the European Poetry Translation awards. Harry now lives in Exeter with his wife, Lynn Guest, a historical novelist. He is a Member of Academi.

The photograph of Harry featured above was taken by Tony Frazer

Reviews:
With respect to A Puzzling Harvest: Collected Poems 1955-2000 (Anvil, 2002)

"…The publication of Harry Guest's A Puzzling Harvest: Collected Poems 1955-2000 (Anvil, 2002) was something of a revelation...[It] revealed that he had gone on developing, experimenting with forms, shunning popularity, performing very little, but continuing to search - in civilized cadences, with wit and genial authority - for a moral and spiritual centre..."
John Greening, TLS

Selected Publications:
Arrangements (Anvil, 1968)
The Cutting Room (Anvil, 1970)
The Place (Sceptre, 1971)
The Achievements (Sceptre, 1974)
Enchanted Acres and Other Poems (Sceptre, 1975)
House Against the Night (Anvil, 1976)
Two Poems (Sceptre, 1976)
Days (Anvil, 1978)
Hidden Change (Greylag, 1978)
Zeami in Exile (Sceptre, 1978)
Emperor of Outer Space (Pig Press, 1983)
Lost and Found: Poems 1976–82 (Anvil, 1983)
Lost Pictures - a novel (Albertine, 1991)
Coming to Terms (Anvil, 1993)
Travellers Literary Companion to Japan (In Print Publishing, 1994)
So Far (Stride, 1998)
The Artist on the Artist (Elm Bank, 2000)
A Puzzling Harvest: Collected Poems 1955-2000 (Anvil, 2002)
Comparisons & Conversions (Shearsman Books, 2009)
Some Times (Anvil, 2010)

Contributed to:
Post–War Japanese Poetry (contributor) (Penguin, 1972)
Victor Hugo: The Distance, The Shadows (translator) (Anvil, 2002)



Comparisons & Conversions (Shearsman Books, 2009)

Comparisons considers the disparities between memory and expectation as well as the alteration in events separated by the gap of years—since, sometimes when we journey, we are "hoping by space to leave / the faults of time behind".

Conversions contains the poetry translated since Versions appeared from Odyssey in 1999. Harry Guest regards the effort of translation as a vital complement to creative writing, providing not only a technical challenge but also the strange effect of inhabiting another's consciousness for a while.

To purchase this title from Shearsman Books, please click on its front cover

Eligible Writers on Tour subjects offered:

1. Read and discuss own poetry
2. Japanese poetry
3. The relationship between poetry and the other arts
4. Translation seminar

AGE RANGE: sixth form, undergraduates, adults