Carcanet Press Logo
Quote of the Day
an admirable concern to keep lines open to writing in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and America.
Seamus Heaney

The Covenant

Poems 1979-1983

Dick Davis

Imprint: Anvil Press Poetry
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (64 pages)
(Pub. Nov 1984)
9780856461248
Out of Stock
  • Description
  • Author
  • Awards
  • Reviews
  • The Covenant contains Dick Davis’s poems written since 1979. It is his third collection, following In the Distance (1975) and Seeing the World (1980), which received the Royal Society of Literature Award under the W.H. Heinemann Bequest in 1981.

    Dick Davis has developed a plain and economical style in which feeling, thought and form blend with uncommon precision. His distinctive personal rhythms spring from the controlled use of classical forms. For all their air of ordered, calmly paced craft, his poems delve into the inexplicable with an acute sense of the complexities of human nature and a fine intuition for those moments in which actual and symbolic realities connect. His gift for memorable lines, for brevity and grace under pressure make him a poet whose verse can be widely appreciated and understood.

    Dick Davis was born in Portsmouth, England, in 1945, and educated at the universities of Cambridge (B.A. and M.A. in English Literature) and Manchester (Ph.D. in Medieval Persian Literature). He lived in Iran for eight years from 1970 to 1978, and also for some time in both Italy and Greece. He ... read more
    Awards won by Dick Davis Winner, 1981 Royal Society of Literature Award (Seeing the World)
    Praise for Dick Davis 'Original poetry and translated Persian verse weave together into a single life, translation as border and as invitation.'
    A.E. Stallings, The TLS
    '...throughout Love in Another Language, a strange perfusion of elements is at work, at once familiar and exotic; there are bizarre depths, weird echoes, beneath the seemingly traditional and seemingly quite "English surfaces of the poems... Dick Davis's collected poems of over forty-three years constitute what the great Persian poet Nizami called a "makhzan-i-asrar", a treasure-house of mysteries and perfected marvels.'

    Eric Ormsby, the TLS

    'It is marvelous to find a poet whose poetry lives through its metre. His handling of it is masterful, and you are never aware of the effort. And the language is exact but relentless, like the perceptions . . . Davis is one of the best poets around.'
    Thom Gunn
Share this...
The Carcanet Blog Near-Life Experience: Rowland Bagnall read more The Silence: Gillian Clarke read more Baby Schema: Isabel Galleymore read more The Iron Bridge: Rebecca Hurst read more Sleepers Awake: Oli Hazzard read more The Miraculous Season: V.R. 'Bunny' Lang, edited by Rosa Campbell read more
Find your local bookshop logo
Arts Council Logo
We thank the Arts Council England for their support and assistance in this interactive Project.
This website ©2000-2024 Carcanet Press Ltd