Guy Butler (Frederick Guy Butler) Biography

South African poet and playwright, born in Cradock, Cape Province, educated at Rhodes University and Brasenose College, Oxford. He was Professor of English at Rhodes University, Grahamstown (1950–78). Versatile in technique, and just as open to African as to European influences, Butler is equally proficient in lyric, meditative, and narrative modes of poetry. His powerfully moving elegy ‘In Memoriam, J. A. R., Drowned, East London’ has much in common with traditional African dirges. Volumes of poetry include Stranger to Europe (1952; enlarged edition 1960), South of the Zambezi (1966), On First Seeing Florence (1968), Selected Poems (1972), and Songs and Ballads (1978). Plays include Take Root and Die (1970), which was produced in Grahamstown in 1966, and Cape Charade (1968). Butler has also written two volumes of autobiography, Karoo Morning (1978) and Bursting World (1983). Together with Christopher Mann, he also edited A New Book of South African Verse in English (1979).