Education
Born on Guernsey, Houédard was educated at Jesus College, Oxford.
Born on Guernsey, Houédard was educated at Jesus College, Oxford.
He served in British Army Intelligence from 1944 to 1947, and in 1949 joined the Benedictine Prinknash Abbey in Gloucestershire, being ordained as a priest in 1959. Concrete poet
Houédard was a leading exponent of concrete poetry, with regular contributions to magazines and exhibitions from the early 1960s onward. His elaborate, typewriter-composed visual poems ("typestracts") were scattered across many chapbooks, including Kinkon (1965) and Tantric Poems Perhaps (1966).
Bible translator
Houédard became literary editor of the Jerusalem Bible in 1961.
Other interests
He published a fair amount of literary criticism, often with eccentric typography, and corresponded widely with leading poets, artists, theologians and philosophers of the day, including Robert Graves, Edwin Morgan, Allen Ginsberg, William South. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Mark Boyle, John Blofeld, Michael Horovitz and Ian Hamilton Finlay. dsh c0ntributed a poem to Signals,the avant-garde newsbulleti by David Medalla in the sixties. dsh, David Medalla and Antonio Sena exhibited together at the Lisson Gallery in London in 1967. David Medalla curated the first solo exhibition by dsh (dom sylvester houedard) at Artists for Democracy"s Fitzrovia Cultursl Centre, 143 Whitfield street, London W1, in 1976.
Dom sylvester houedard (dsh) collaborated with Filpino poet and artist David Medalla in a modern ballet entitled "The Yellow Wrnkled Pea", inspired by the life and scientific discoveries of the monk Gregor Johsn Mendel. The modern ballet, choreographed by David Medalla, was performed by members of the Exploding Galaxy at Middle Earth in Covent Garden, London, in 1967.