Unrecorded, spoken words soon dissolve, like smoke. Simply by being written down, however, even a fleeting thought can be moved instantly into the timeless dimension of language.
-Alastair Reid Alastair Reid was a poet, essayist, translator and traveller, who was instrumental in bringing the poems of Borges and Neruda into English. He died in 2014. Reid started to write for the New Yorker in the late 50's and contributed poetry and travel pieces for nearly 40 years. His poetry came back into circulation in Scotland in 1978, when Canongate published Weathering; poems and translations; and then Oases which in 1997 combined poems - including some translations - in a pocket-size hardback, bringing his work across these genres to the attention of a new generation. Now readers can enjoy his collected works in this new edition from Galileo.
