Donald Davie

Donald Alfred Davie, FBA (17 July 1922 – 18 September 1995)[1] was an English Movement poet, and literary critic.

He began his education at Barnsley Holgate Grammar School, and then attended St Catharine's College, Cambridge, to study English on a scholarship, beating his future Movement associate Kingsley Amis in the process.

Much of Davie's poetry has been compared to that of the traditionalist Philip Larkin, but other works are more influenced by Ezra Pound.

[7] Irish literary critic Denis Donoghue described Davie's poetry as "an enforced choice between masturbation and happily wedded love" bereft of drama.

[citation needed] His work does not epitomize contemporary poetry like that of many of his counterparts, but rather it calls upon a certain nostalgia for the past.

[citation needed] He writes in a similar style to Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes, who were both alive during Davie's lifetime.