David MacLeod Black
Encyclopedia
David Macleod Black is a South Africa
n-born Scottish
poet and psychoanalyst. He is author of six collections of poetry and is included in British Poetry since 1945, Emergency Kit (Faber), Wild Reckoning (Calouste Gulbenkian), Twentieth Century Scottish Poetry (Faber) and many other anthologies. As a psychoanalyst he has published many professional papers, an edited volume on psychoanalysis and religion, and a collection of essays relating to values and science.
(his country of birth), Malawi
and Tanzania
before moving with his family to Scotland in 1950. After leaving school he spent a year in France before going to Edinburgh University to study Philosophy. Later he studied Buddhism and Hinduism under Ninian Smart at Lancaster. While at Edinburgh he met the Scottish poet Robert Garioch, who became a lasting influence and inspiration. In the late 1960s he lived in London and taught philosophy and literature at Chelsea School of Art, where he met the American poet Martha Kapos and the painters Ken Kiff and John McLean, who were to become lifelong friends.
Following six months teaching in Japan, and a year at the Findhorn Foundation on the Moray Firth, Black trained in Psychotherapy first at the Westminster Pastoral Foundation (WPF) and later with the British Psychoanalytic Society/Institute of Psychoanalysis. After the unexpected death of WPF's founder, William Kyle, he chaired the Executive Committee for a year until the appointment of the new Director, Derek Blows. He has worked for many years as a psychoanalyst in London. he has been a lecturer and supervisor on a number of psychoanalytic and psychotherapy trainings and is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytic Society. He is married with two step-daughters, and now lives in London and Wiltshire.
11 and British Poetry since 1945, and was widely commented on in Scottish contexts, for example in Robin Fulton's Contemporary Scottish Poetry(1974) and in reviews by Anne Stevenson (Lines Review 69, 1979) and Andrew Grieg (Akros 16:46, 1981).In 1991 Polygon published Black's Collected Poems 1964-77 with an introduction by James Greene. After that he published little poetry until Love As Landscape Painter (Translations of the Roman Elegies and other poems by Goethe)(Fras 2006) and an original collection, Claiming Kindred (Arc Publications 2011).
Under a slightly different version of his name, David M. Black, his psychoanalytic papers have appeared in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, British Journal of Psychotherapy, Journal of Consciousness Studies and elsewhere. He is author of the official history of the Westminster Pastoral Foundation, A Place For Exploration (WPF). In 2006 he edited Psychoanalysis and Religion in the 21st Century: Competitors or Collaborators? (Routledge)and in 2011 he published a collection of original papers, Why Things Matter: The Place of Values in Science, Psychoanalysis and Religion (Routledge)
In addition, Black has written uncollected articles on a wide variety of Scottish poets, Robert Garioch, George MacBeth, Hugh MacDiarmid, Ian Hamilton Finlay and Edwin Morgan. He has written with great admiration about the work of Richard Wilbur. While at Edinburgh University he edited the poetry magazine Extra Verse, and in the early 2000s he was a regular reviewer of poetry collections for the journal Poetry London.
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
n-born Scottish
Scottish people
The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...
poet and psychoanalyst. He is author of six collections of poetry and is included in British Poetry since 1945, Emergency Kit (Faber), Wild Reckoning (Calouste Gulbenkian), Twentieth Century Scottish Poetry (Faber) and many other anthologies. As a psychoanalyst he has published many professional papers, an edited volume on psychoanalysis and religion, and a collection of essays relating to values and science.
Life
As a child, David Black lived in South AfricaSouth Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
(his country of birth), Malawi
Malawi
The Republic of Malawi is a landlocked country in southeast Africa that was formerly known as Nyasaland. It is bordered by Zambia to the northwest, Tanzania to the northeast, and Mozambique on the east, south and west. The country is separated from Tanzania and Mozambique by Lake Malawi. Its size...
and Tanzania
Tanzania
The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...
before moving with his family to Scotland in 1950. After leaving school he spent a year in France before going to Edinburgh University to study Philosophy. Later he studied Buddhism and Hinduism under Ninian Smart at Lancaster. While at Edinburgh he met the Scottish poet Robert Garioch, who became a lasting influence and inspiration. In the late 1960s he lived in London and taught philosophy and literature at Chelsea School of Art, where he met the American poet Martha Kapos and the painters Ken Kiff and John McLean, who were to become lifelong friends.
Following six months teaching in Japan, and a year at the Findhorn Foundation on the Moray Firth, Black trained in Psychotherapy first at the Westminster Pastoral Foundation (WPF) and later with the British Psychoanalytic Society/Institute of Psychoanalysis. After the unexpected death of WPF's founder, William Kyle, he chaired the Executive Committee for a year until the appointment of the new Director, Derek Blows. He has worked for many years as a psychoanalyst in London. he has been a lecturer and supervisor on a number of psychoanalytic and psychotherapy trainings and is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytic Society. He is married with two step-daughters, and now lives in London and Wiltshire.
Career
As a poet under the name D.M. Black, he was most prolific in the 60s and 70s, publishing With Decorum (1967), The Educators (1969), The Happy Crow (1974) and Gravitations (1979).Almost all of this early poetry was narrative, initially surrealist but becoming increasingly reflective an psychological as time went on. The last of these early collections, Gravitations, consists largely of three long narrative poems, two of them written in a hendecasyllabic metre derived from Swinburne. During this period Black's work also appeared in Penguin Modern PoetsPenguin Modern Poets
Penguin Modern Poets was a series of 27 poetry books published by Penguin Books in the 1960s and 1970s, each containing work by three contemporary poets . The series was begun in 1962 and published an average of two volumes per year throughout the 1960s...
11 and British Poetry since 1945, and was widely commented on in Scottish contexts, for example in Robin Fulton's Contemporary Scottish Poetry(1974) and in reviews by Anne Stevenson (Lines Review 69, 1979) and Andrew Grieg (Akros 16:46, 1981).In 1991 Polygon published Black's Collected Poems 1964-77 with an introduction by James Greene. After that he published little poetry until Love As Landscape Painter (Translations of the Roman Elegies and other poems by Goethe)(Fras 2006) and an original collection, Claiming Kindred (Arc Publications 2011).
Under a slightly different version of his name, David M. Black, his psychoanalytic papers have appeared in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, British Journal of Psychotherapy, Journal of Consciousness Studies and elsewhere. He is author of the official history of the Westminster Pastoral Foundation, A Place For Exploration (WPF). In 2006 he edited Psychoanalysis and Religion in the 21st Century: Competitors or Collaborators? (Routledge)and in 2011 he published a collection of original papers, Why Things Matter: The Place of Values in Science, Psychoanalysis and Religion (Routledge)
In addition, Black has written uncollected articles on a wide variety of Scottish poets, Robert Garioch, George MacBeth, Hugh MacDiarmid, Ian Hamilton Finlay and Edwin Morgan. He has written with great admiration about the work of Richard Wilbur. While at Edinburgh University he edited the poetry magazine Extra Verse, and in the early 2000s he was a regular reviewer of poetry collections for the journal Poetry London.