Dick Davis is a "classical" poet in the strictest sense of the term. In his poetry he addresses time-honored themes of universal human import with the utmost clarity in diction and syntax (syntax for Davis being "the mind's verbal logic"). Among English poets born in the 1940s, Davis has been highly praised by practicing poets and by poetry editors--Thom Gunn and Michael Schmidt, for instance. Davis's view is that poetic composition should be carried out in the publicly available language of civilized discourse; it should be complex without sacrifice of lucidity; it should be rational without emotional sterility, abstract as well as particularized in concrete details. Having achieved his own standards, in 1980 Davis was welcomed, at just thirty-five, as a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Davis was born on 18 April 1945 in Portsmouth, Hampshire. His father is an optician. Davis has one sister, and his first book...