Sylvester Houédard

Dom Sylvester Houédard
Born	16 February 1924(1924-02-16) Guernsey
Died	15 January 1992(1992-01-15) (aged 67)
Nationality	British
Field	poetry, concrete poetry, literary criticism, theology, translation, spirituality

Dom (Pierre-)Sylvester Houédard (16 February 1924–15 January 1992), also known under the acronym dsh, was a Benedictine priest, theologian and noted concrete poet.

Life

Born on Guernsey, Houédard was educated at Jesus College, Oxford. He served in British Army Intelligence from 1944 to 1947, and in 1949 joined the Benedictine Prinknash Abbey in Gloucestershire, being ordained as a priest in 1959.

Concrete poet

Houédard was a leading exponent of concrete poetry, with regular contributions to magazines and exhibitions from the early 1960s onward. His elaborate, typewriter-composed visual poems ("typestracts") were scattered across many chapbooks, including Kinkon (1965) and Tantric Poems Perhaps (1966). Among his best-known works is the poem Frog-Pond-Plop, his English rendition of a zen haiku by Matsuo Basho.

Bible translator

Houédard became literary editor of the Jerusalem Bible in 1961.

Other interests

Houédard cultivated an interest in multiple religious traditions; he wrote commentaries on Meister Eckhart and was a founder member of the Eckhart Society, as well as an honorary fellow of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society. He published a fair amount of literary criticism, often with eccentric typography, and corresponded widely with leading poets, artists, theologians and philosophers of the day, including Robert Graves, Edwin Morgan, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Mark Boyle, John Blofeld, Michael Horovitz and Ian Hamilton Finlay.