Sylvester Houédard

Houédard was a leading exponent of concrete poetry, with regular contributions to magazines and exhibitions from the early 1960s onward.[2] His elaborate, typewriter-composed visual poems ("typestracts") were scattered across many chapbooks, including Kinkon (1965) and Tantric Poems Perhaps (1967).[4] Among his best-known works is the poem "Frog-Pond-Plop", his English rendition of a zen haiku by Matsuo Bashō.[3][4] He also edited 4 issues of the magazine Kroklok (1971-1976), a periodical devoted to research into the history of sound poetry.

Houédard became literary editor of the Jerusalem Bible in 1961.[2]

Houédard cultivated an interest in multiple religious traditions; he wrote commentaries on Meister Eckhart and was a founder-member of the Eckhart Society, as well as an honorary fellow of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society.[5] He published a fair amount of literary criticism, often with eccentric typography,[4] and corresponded widely with leading poets, artists, theologians and philosophers of the day, including Robert Graves, Edwin Morgan, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Mark Boyle, John Blofeld, Michael Horovitz and Ian Hamilton Finlay.[3] In 1965 he collaborated with Jasia Reichardt from the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London on the connection between poetry and visual art which led to a joint publication.[6] dom sylvester houedard (dsh) collaborated next with Filpino poet and artist David Medalla in a modern ballet entitled The Yellow Wrinkled Pea, inspired by the life and scientific discoveries of the monk Gregor Johann Mendel; the modern ballet, choreographed by Medalla, was performed in 1967 by members of the Exploding Galaxy at Middle Earth in Covent Garden, London, in 1967. dsh contributed a poem to Signals, the avant-garde newsbulletin by Medalla in the sixties. dsh, Medalla and Antonio Sena exhibited together at the Lisson Gallery in London in 1967. Medalla curated the first solo exhibition by dsh in 1976 at Artists for Democracy's Fitzrovia Cultural Centre, 143 Whitfield Street, London.

In 2012, Occasional Papers published Notes from the Cosmic Typewriter, a book devoted to the monk, scholar, translator, concrete poet and artist Dom Sylvester Houédard. Edited by Nicola Simpson, with essays by Gustavo Grandal Montero, Rick Poynor, David Toop and Charles Verey.