The first volume of David Wevill's Collected covers the work originally published in the UK - although the books also appeared in the US and Canada. Four full collections are represented: Birth of a Shark (1963), A Christ of the Ice-Floes (1966), Firebreak (1971) and Where the Arrow Falls (1973), although the author had already relocated from London to Austin, Texas by the time the last two were published. Added to the full collections are poems that appeared in the two anthologies, A Group Anthology (1963) and Penguin Modern Poets 4 (1963, in which the author shared space with David Holbrook and Christopher Middleton, the latter a fellow Texan exile). This volume demonstrates exactly why Wevill was held in such high regard in the 1960s and 1970s. This book may be regarded as an act of restitution, bringing significant work back before the public.
Important for the development of his early work were Jungian theory and mid-century Spanish poetry, above all García Lorca, Neruda and Paz. As Martin Seymour-Smith observed, "The Jungian 'search', an admittedly circular one, is Wevill's main theme, and so his poetry needs to be read in its entirety to be fully appreciated."
"Among the poets of Atlantis - those who belong to both the Old World and the New, I have always thought of David Wevill as one of the finest in our time."
- Nathaniel Tarn
David Wevill was born a Canadian in Japan in 1935, and was educated in both Canada and England. He has lived in Burma and in Spain but has made his home in Austin, Texas for the past fifty years. While resident in England in the 1950s and '60s, he established a substantial reputation as a poet, publishing four volumes between 1964 and 1974. He won prizes, was represented in major anthologies such as The New Poetry and A Group Anthology, and was included in the renowned Penguin Modern Poets series before his first full collection appeared. His first four publications, gathered together in this volume with some uncollected poems from the Penguin volume and A Group Anthology, are: Birth of a Shark (1964), A Christ of the Ice-floes (1966), Firebreak (1971) and Where the Arrow Falls (1973). He also published translations of Ferenc Juhász during this period. In the late '60s he moved across the Atlantic to take up a position in Austin, Texas, and then joined the University of Texas there in 1970, where he remained until retirement as Professor Emeritus in 2008. He still lives in Austin today.
