BUTLER, (FREDERICK) GUY

born Jan. 21, 1918, Cradock, Cape Province, S.Af. South African poet and playwright, many of whose poems have extraordinary sensitivity and brilliant imagery. Butler began writing during military service in North Africa and Europe (194045). After studying at the University of Oxford, he joined the faculty of Rhodes University in Grahamstown, S.Af. He studied and edited diaries of colonial settlers and edited an influential broadsheet of contemporary poetry, New Coin, but he was also considerably involved in the theatre. His first play, The Dam (1953), took a prize at the Van Riebeeck Festival, and subsequent verse drama included The Dove Returns (1954), Take Root or Die (1966), and Cape Charade (1967). Stranger to Europe (1952) contains some of Butler's first poetry. Other poetry volumes include Selected Poems (1975; rev. ed., 1989), Songs and Ballads (1978), and Pilgrimage to Dias Cross (1987). The two volumes of Butler's autobiography, Karoo Morning (1977) and Bursting World (1983), proceed from his early memories of his family up to his war service. In 1989 he edited with (Jeff Opland) The Magic Tree, a collection of 119 narrative poems translated from several South African languages and chosen for their South African setting.