Dom Sylvester Houédard
Mystic, spy, monk, and pioneer of typewritten visual poetry.
Dom Sylvester Houédard–or 'dsh', as he called himself–is, with Ian Hamilton Finlay, one of the two principle founders of the Concrete Poetry movement in Britain. Houédard began experimenting with what he called 'typestracts' in the 1940s, and developed a highly distinctive style of typewritten visual poetry, using coloured typewriter ribbons and carbon papers. When Concrete Poetry emerged as an international movement in the early 1960s, Houédard became–through his legendary letter writing–one of its most active participants, advocates and theorists.
The work of Houédard is notable for its extraordinary formal discipline, for its exploration of the multiple combinations of letterforms and words, and for its examination of the spatial possibilities of the page. He saw Concrete Poetry as an extension of an ancient tradition of shaped verse, and his works are allied to notions of mystical contemplation. His interest in mysticism also encouraged him to explore Buddhism and Hinduism, and some of his works echo the mystic-psychedelic imagery of the hippy era.
Dom Sylvester Houédard was born in 1924 on Guernsey, and studied at Jesus College, Oxford, and at St Anselmo, Rome. In 1949, after serving in British Army intelligence he became a monk at Prinknash Abbey in Gloucestershire, and was ordained as a priest in 1959. Houédard made many contributions to religious life, becoming a champion of the ecumenical movement in the 1960s, and working as a theologian and as a translator of the Bible and other religious texts. Houédard died in 1992.
Dom Sylvester Houédard in the British Council's art collection
Wikipedia entry for Dom Sylvester Houédard