Alastair Reid is a Scottish poet, translator and was for over 40 years a contributor to the New York magazine. He became friendly with Robert Graves in the 1950s but their friendship did not survive Reid's love affair with Graves' muse Margot Callas. As well as writing his own poetry Reid has translated the South American poets Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda, separately encountered in 1964. Reid has written: 'Borges’s work is as spare as Neruda’s is ebullient, as dubious and ironic as Neruda’s is passionately affirmative, as reticent as Neruda’s is voluble’ (‘Borges and Neruda’).



In the foreword to 'Weathering' Reid says that he regarded that volume ‘as something of a farewell on my part to formal poetry, which seems to me now something of an artificial gesture, like wearing a tie. I am more interested in the essential act of putting-well-into-words, good writing; and I feel that the fine attention one gives to words in poems can also be applied to prose. But it is from poetry more than anything that one learns to say well.’ Indeed it can be argued that his high reputation today rests more on his prose pieces, a number of which are collected here, than on his poetry.