Alistair Elliot

Alistair Elliot (13 October 1932 – 3 November 2018)^[1] was a British librarian, poet and translator.

Life

Elliot was born in Liverpool, son of a Scottish family doctor and an English mother, and educated at Asheville School in the United States, Fettes College, Edinburgh, and Christ Church, Oxford.^[2]

Elliot was a vegetable invoice clerk in Covent Garden market, night sterilizer in a food factory, waiter, film critic, supply teacher, actor (with the English Children's Theatre under Caryl Jenner) and finally librarian in Kensington, Keele, Shiraz, and lastly at Newcastle University.^[3]

Elliot's translation of Euripides's Medea was performed in theatres in London and New York in a production by Jonathan Kent with Diana Rigg in the leading rôle.

Elliot's poems appeared in Oxford Poetry,^[4] The Paris Review,^[5] and many other journals.

Awards

• 2000 Cholmondeley Award

Works

Poetry

• Air in the Wrong Place, Eagle Press, 1968.
• Contentions, Ceolftith 38, 1977, signed edition ISBN 0 90446 1 24 6. ordinary edition ISBN 0 90446 1 21 1
• Kisses: Poems collaboration with Barry Hirst, Ceolfrith, 1978. ISBN 978-0-904461-42-8
• Talking Back, 1982.
• On the Appian Way, 1984.
• My country: collected poems. Carcanet. 1989. ISBN 978-0-85635-846-3.
• Turning the Stones. Carcanet. 1993. ISBN 978-1-85754-041-3.
• Facing Things. Carcanet. 1997. ISBN 978-1-85754-304-9.
• The Real Poems. Shoestring Press. 2008. ISBN 978-1-904886-71-6.
• Imaginary Lines. Shoestring Press. 2012. ISBN 978-1-907356-56-8.
• Telling the Stones. Shoestring Press. 2017. ISBN 978-1-910323-69-4.

Translation

• Heinrich Heine (1979). The Lazarus poems. Translated by Alistair Elliot. Mid Northumberland Arts Group. ISBN 9780856352874.
• Paul Verlaine (1979). Women-Men. Translated by Alistair Elliot. The Sheep Meadow Press. ISBN 978-0-935296-44-0.
• Virgil, John Dryden (1981). Alistair Elliot (ed.). The Georgics. Mid Northumberland Arts Group. ISBN 978-0-904790-13-9.
• French Love Poems. Bloodaxe Books. 1991. ISBN 978-1-85224-169-8.
• Euripides (1993). Medea. Translated by Alistair Elliot. Oberon Books.
• Italian Landscape Poems. Bloodaxe Books. 1994. ISBN 978-1-85224-247-3.
• Paul Valéry (1997). La Jeune Parque. Translated by Alistair Elliot. Bloodaxe Books. ISBN 978-1-85224-387-6.
• Roman food poems: a modern translation. Translated by Alistair Elliot. Prospect Books. 2003. ISBN 978-1-903018-25-5.
• Euripides (2008). Phaethon, reconstructed from the fragments. Translated by Alistair Elliot. Oberon Books. ISBN 978-1-84002-897-3.

Editor

• Alistair Elliot, ed. (1970). Poems by James I and Others: from a Manuscript Miscellany in Newcastle University Library. Eagle Press. ISBN 978-0-9500358-5-7.