Anthony Conran Biography

British poet and translator, born in Kharghpur, India, educated at the University College of North Wales, Bangor, where he became Research Fellow and Tutor in English in 1957. His work as a poet and translator has involved him closely with the poetic literature of the Welsh language and of the Welsh metrical and assonantal traditions. His first collection of poetry, Formal Poems (1961), was followed by numerous others, among them Spirit Level (1974), Life Fund (1979), Blodeuwedd and Other Poems (1988), Poems 1951–1967 (1974), and Castles (1993). Much of his verse reflects the communal functions of Welsh poetry in its celebratory or elegiac treatments of events within a localized culture. His best-known collection of translations is The Penguin Book of Welsh Verse (1967), which was highly acclaimed for its combination of accuracy and musicality. His other translations include Eighteen Poems of Dante Alighieri (1975). The Cost of Strangeness (1982) is a critical study of Anglo-Welsh poetry.