Douglas Reid Skinner
Douglas Reid Skinner is a South African writer, editor, translator and poet. He was born in 1949 in Upington, in the Northern Cape province of South Africa.
Literary career
Skinner has published seven collections of poems, the most recent of which was Liminal, published by uHlanga in 2017.His poems have appeared in magazines in South Africa, The United Kingdom, America, Italy and France.
As translator
He has translated various works from Afrikaans, French, Hebrew, Italian and Portuguese.Recent translationsThe Secret Ambition: Selected Poems of Valerio Magrelli
- English section of poems by Marco Fazzini translated from the Italian, ''21 Poesie/Poemas/Poems''
Editing and publishing
From late 1986 to early 1989 Skinner was a compiler of The Contemporary Muse for the SABC, a weekly half-hour broadcast of poetry on the ‘A’ programme.He also created and directed The Carrefour Press, publishing over twenty collections of poetry, including such authors as Basil du Toit, John Eppel, Gus Ferguson, Douglas Livingstone, Ruth Miller and Fiona Zerbst. The Carrefour Press also published novels, a collection of essays by Stephen Watson and non-fiction works by George Seferis and Marthinus Versfeld.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s he was a member of the adjudication panels for:
- National Festival of the Arts Poetry Competition
- English Association Narrative Poem Competition
- Sanlam Poetry Prize
- English Association Poetry Prize
As editor
- Editor of Contrast
- Editor of Upstream
- Editor of New Contrast
- Founder and editor of South African Literary Review
- Co-editor of Stanzas
- English editor and translator for the AVBOB Poetry Project