Born in Dublin, Ireland, Clodd went to Bishop's Stortford College and later worked with the insurance firm Scottish Widows.
During World War II he was a conscientious objector and worked with the Friends Ambulance Unit in Egypt and with UNRRA in Italy.
In the 1950s and early 1960s Clodd published poetry pamphlets by Christopher Logue, Ronald Firbank, and Kathleen Raine.
Alongside the familiar names of Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, Federico García Lorca, Harold Pinter, Kathleen Raine, and Vernon Watkins, the Press also introduced Frances Horovitz, Jeremy Hooker, Jeremy Reed, Richard Burns, David Gascoyne and Peter Russell.
He had almost every publication by T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, as well as books by James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, and Seamus Heaney.