Skip to content

Scottish Poetry Library

Register/Sign in
Shopping Bag Shopping Bag
Bringing people and poems together
  • Home
  • Poetry
    • Poets
    • Poems
    • Makar – National Poet
      • Our Waking Breath: A Poem-letter from Scotland to Ukraine
      • A Woman’s A Woman
      • The story of the Makar – National Poet of Scotland
    • Best Scottish Poems
    • Spiorad an Àite
      Spirit of Place
    • The Trysting Thorns
    • Poetry Ambassadors
      Tosgairean na Bàrdachd
      • Poetry Commissions: Walter Scott 250
        Coimiseanan Bàrdachd: Walter Scott 250
      • Poetry Ambassadors 2021
    • Poetry Ambassadors 2020
    • Posters
    • Podcasts
  • Library
    • Become a borrower
    • Catalogue
    • Collections
    • Ask a librarian
    • Copyright enquiries
  • Learning
    • SQA set texts
    • Learning resources
    • Designing sensory poetry activities
    • Children’s poems in Scots
    • National Poetry Day archive
    • New to poetry?
    • Advice for poets
  • Events
    • What’s On
    • Meeting rooms and venue hire
    • Exhibitions
  • Shop
    • Poetry Highlights
    • Entropie Books
    • Stichill Marigold Press
    • Poems for Doctors, Nurses & Teachers
    • Scottish Poetry
    • Poetry Pamphlet Cards
    • Help
  • About us
    • Our story
    • Our people
    • Jobs
    • Company Papers & Policies
    • Our projects
    • Our building
    • FAQs
    • Find us
  • Support us
    • Become a Friend
    • Donate
  • Blog
Shopping BagShopping Bag
Ask a librarian
  • Home
  • >
  • Poetry
  • >
  • Poets
  • >
  • D. M. Black
Donate Donate icon Ask a Librarian Ask a Librarian icon

D. M. Black

b.1941

D. M. Black © Flora Newbigin
POEMS LISTEN BIBLIOGRAPHY CRITICISM

David Macleod Black was born in South Africa in 1941 and moved to Scotland in 1950. He was brought up in St Andrews.  He has degrees in philosophy from Edinburgh University and in Eastern Religions from Lancaster; in the later 1960s he taught philosophy and literature at Chelsea Art School in London. He went on to train as a psychotherapist at Westminster Pastoral Foundation and then as a psychoanalyst with the British Psychoanalytic Society. He now works in London.

He published four collections of poetry and a handful of pamphlets in the 1960s and 1970s; his work was included in Penguin Modern Poets 11 (1968). Collected Poems 1964-87 was published by Polygon in 1991. Love as Landscape Painter, translations of the Roman Elegies and other poems by Goethe, appeared from Fras Publications in 2007. Claiming Kindred (Arc), his first original collection for 30 years, was published in 2011.  He has also published on psychoanalytic topics, most recently Why Things Matter: the place of values in science, psychoanalysis and religion (Routledge 2011).  He edited  Psychoanalysis and Religion in the 21st Century: competitors or collaborators? (Routledge 2006).

Among his articles on Scottish poets are studies of MacDiarmaid, Garioch, Edwin Morgan and George MacBeth as well as on the American poet Richard Wilbur. His most recent publication is a translation of Dante’s Purgatory.

Read more

Read the poems

  • The Buddha Amitābha
  • The Sunlit Surfaces
  • January 2003

Listen

Selected Bibliography

The Rocklestrakes  (London: Outposts,1960)
From the Mountain  (London: Outposts, 1963)
Theory of Diet (London: Turret, 1966)
With Decorum (Lowestoft: Scorpion Press, 1967)
A Dozen Short Poems (London: Turret, 1968)
(with Peter Redgrove, D.M. Thomas) Penguin Modern Poets 11 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968)
The Educators (London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1969)
The Old Hag (Preston: Akros, 1972)
The Happy Crow (Loanhead: M. Macdonald, 1974)
Gravitations (Loanhead: M. Macdonald, 1979)
Collected Poems 1964-87 (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1991)
Love as Landscape Painter: selected poems [of J. W. von Goethe] (Blair Atholl: Fras, 2006)
Claiming Kindred (Todmorden: Arc Publications, 2011)
The Arrow-maker  (Arc Publications 2017)
The Bi-Plane (Mariscat Press 2017)
(As translator) Purgatorio, by Dante Alighieri (New York: New York Review Books 2021)

Selected Biography & Criticism

Robin Fulton, Contemporary Scottish Poetry: individuals and contexts (Loanhead: Macdonald, 1974)

Robin Hamilton, Science and Psychodrama: the poetry of Edwin Morgan and David Black (Frome: Bran’s Head Books, 1982)

R. J. C. Watt, ‘David (D. M.) Black’ in Vincent B. Sherry, ed., Poets of Great Britain and Ireland since 1960, Pt. 1 (Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1985)

Hugh Macpherson, ‘D.M. Black’, in Scottish Book Collector, Vol. 2, No. 12 (Aug/Sept 1991)

Further Information

D. M. Black’s website

From the Library Catalogue

Publications about D. M. Black
Publications by D. M. Black

Share this
Facebook
Twitter
Email
  • Newsletter signup
  • Accessibility
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
Scottish Poetry Library
5 Crichton's Close, Canongate
Edinburgh EH8 8DT
Tel: +44 (0)131 557 2876
© Scottish Poetry Library 2022.
The Scottish Poetry Library is a registered charity (No. SCO23311).
City of Edinburgh logo Green Arts Initiative logo Creative Scotland logo
Scottish Poetry Library