Since 1960 David Macleod Black (who published his books until 1972 as D. M. Black and thereafter as David Black) has produced nine collections of verse which show him to be an unusually independent and innovative figure in contemporary poetry. His early affiliations with a Scottish version of 1960s surrealism have been extended and adapted to a point where, enriched by profound interests in philosophy, religion, and psychology, they have provided the basis for his most substantial achievement: a number of extended narrative poems aptly described by one of his critics as psychodramas.

Born in Wynberg, South Africa, in 1941, David Black spent his early childhood in Malawi and Tanzania before going to live in St. Andrews, Scotland, in 1949. On leaving school he spent a formative year in France before beginning a degree at Edinburgh University in 1960. After a two-year interlude in London doing odd jobs, he returned to Edinburgh and...