Dick Davis was born in Portsmouth, England, on 18 April 1945, to Daniel Cambridge and Marie Truscott Cambridge. He took the surname of his stepfather, Roy Davis, when he was sixteen. After being educated at various state schools, he did his undergraduate work at Kings College Cambridge, where he read English. He received his B.A. degree in 1966 and an M.A. in 1970. From 1966 to 1968 he taught English in Italy and Greece; from 1968 to 1970 he was Lecturer in English Literature at Margaret McMillan College in Yorkshire, England. Anvil Press Poetry published his first book of poems, In the Distance, in 1975.

From 1970 to 1978 Davis lived in Iran, and there he met Afkham Darbandi, a nurse who saved his life during a serious illness, and whom he subsequently married. They left Iran for England at the beginning of the Islamic Revolution in 1978, where their daughters Mariam and Mehri were born in 1982 and...