Alastair Reid was born on March 22, 1926, in Whithorn, Scotland, and passed away on September 21, 2014, in Manhattan, New York. He was a Scottish poet and an expert in South American literature. Reid was known for writing playful and cheerful poems, as well as translating works by famous South American poets, Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda. Even though he was famous for translating poems, his own poems also received attention during his life. He lived in many countries, including Spain, Switzerland, Greece, Morocco, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, the Dominican Republic, and the United States. During the time when William Shawn was the editor, Reid wrote for The New Yorker magazine. However, he earned most of his money by teaching.

Life

Reid was born in Whithorn, Galloway, Scotland, to a clergyman. During the Second World War, he worked in the Royal Navy to break secret codes. After the war, he studied ancient literature at the University of St Andrews and briefly taught ancient literature at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. In the mid-1950s, he traveled to Mallorca and worked for a time as the secretary of Robert Graves.

In 1984, during an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Reid admitted making up many details of his reports from Spain for the New Yorker, including creating fictional places and giving quotes to made-up people. He said these stories were an attempt to share "a larger truth, of which facts form a part." In his book Whereabouts, Reid responded to this article.

Reid wrote more than forty books, including poems, translations, and travel writing. These works include Ounce Dice Trice, a book of playful and nonsensical writing for children (illustrated by Ben Shahn), and two collections of his work: Outside In: Selected Prose and Inside Out: Selected Poetry and Translations (both published in 2008).

During the 1980s and 1990s, Reid lived much of the time on a ginger plantation in Samaná, Dominican Republic, until 2003, when tourism in the area increased greatly.

Reid died on September 21, 2014, at the age of 88, due to bleeding in the stomach while being treated for pneumonia. He is survived by his children, Michael Reid Hunter and Jasper Reid, and his wife, Leslie Clark.

Selected bibliography

• To Lighten My House: A Collection of Poems (1953)
• Ounce, Dice, Trice: A Book of Poems with Drawings by Ben Shahn (1958)
• Oddments, Inklings, Omens, Moments: A Collection of Poems (1959)
• Passwords: Place, Poems, Preoccupations (1964)
• Weathering: A Book of Poems and Translations (1978)
• Whereabouts: Notes on Being a Foreigner (1990)
• Inside Out: A Collection of Poetry and Translations (2008)
• Outside In: A Collection of Prose (2008)
• Barefoot: The Collected Poems (2018)