Henry Reed Biography

British poet and radio dramatist, born in Birmingham, educated at Birmingham University. After periods as a teacher and a journalist, he worked in the Foreign Office and Naval Intelligence during the Second World War and began his prolific career as a writer for radio in 1945. Five of his many verse-dramas are collected in The Streets of Pompeii and Other Plays (1971); selections from his humorous prose writings for radio are contained in Hilda Tablet and Other Plays (1971). His reputation as poet is based on A Map of Verona (1946), the only substantial collection published in his lifetime, which consistently displays his exceptional originality and accomplishment. He is best known for the remarkable sequence consisting of ‘Naming of Parts’, ‘Judging Distances’, and ‘Unarmed Combat’; among the most frequently anthologized poems of the Second World War, they exemplify Reed's keenly developed and purposeful sense of the absurd. A Map of Verona also features ‘Chard Whitlow’, his celebrated parody of T. S. Eliot's manner in Four Quartets. Collected Poems (1991), edited by Jon Stallworthy, contains much previously unpublished work. Other works by Reed include the critical study The Novel since 1939 (1948).