David Anthony Wevill (born 1935) is a Japanese-born Canadian poet and translator. He became a dual citizen (

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

and

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

) in 1994. Wevill is a

professor emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

in the Department of English at The University of Texas at Austin. AustinAudioAnthologyProjectNakedChildren

Wevill was born in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

and went to Canada before the outbreak of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. He read History and English at

Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Gonville and Caius College, often referred to simply as Caius ( ), is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1348, it is the fourth-oldest of the University of Cambridge's 31 colleges and one of th ...

, and became a noted member of an underground literary movement in London known as The Group. Wevill first made a name for himself as a poet when he was included in A. Alvarez's anthology ''The New Poetry'' (Penguin, 1962), aimed at resisting the conservative milieu of mainstream British poetry. In 1963 Wevill was showcased in ''A Group Anthology'' (Oxford University Press). Wevill is also the former editor of ''Delos'', a literary journal centered on poetry in translation and the poetics of translation. He was awarded a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

for Poetry in 1981. Wevill was the third and final husband of

Assia Wevill Assia Esther Wevill ( Gutmann; 15 May 1927 – 23 March 1969) was a German Jewish woman who escaped the Nazis at the beginning of World War II and emigrated to Palestine, via Italy, then later the United Kingdom, where she had an affair wi ...

, from 1960 to her death in 1969.

Works

* ''Penguin Modern Poets 4'' (Penguin, 1963) * ''Birth of a Shark'' (Macmillan, 1964) * ''A Christ of the Ice-Floes'' (Macmillan, 1966) * ''Penguin Modern European Poets: Ferenc Juhász'' (Penguin, 1970) * ''Firebreak'' (Macmillan, 1971) * ''Where the Arrow Falls'' (St. Martin's, 1974) * ''Casual Tie

' (Curbstone, 1983; Tavern Books, 2010) * ''Other Names for the Heart'' (Exile Editions Ltd., 1985) * ''Figure of 8: New Poems and Selected Translations'' (Exile Editions Ltd., 1987) * ''Figure of 8'' (Shearsman, 1988) * ''Child Eating Snow'' (Exile Editions Ltd., 1994) * ''Solo With Grazing Deer'' (Exile Editions Ltd., 2001) * ''Departures'' (Shearsman, 2003) * ''Asterisks'' (Exile Editions Ltd., 2007) * ''To Build My Shadow a Fire: The Poetry and Translations of David Wevil

' edited by Michael McGriff (Truman State University Press, 2010)

References

External links

''To Build My Shadow a Fire''Faculty page
(

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

)
''Guardian'' article
1935 births Living people Alumni of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Canadian expatriates in the United States University of Texas at Austin faculty Canadian academics 20th-century Canadian poets Canadian male poets 20th-century Canadian male writers {{Canada-poet-stub