Not in Reilly.

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.