Richard (Dick) Davis (born 1945) is an English–American Iranologist, poet, university professor and award-winning translator of Persian verse, who is affiliated with the literary movement known as New Formalism in American poetry.

Born into a working-class family shortly before the end of World War II, Davis grew up in the Yorkshire fishing village of Withernsea during the 1950s, where an experimental school made it possible for Davis to become the first member of his family to attend university. Shortly before graduating from Cambridge University, Davis was left heartbroken by the suicide of his schizophrenic brother and decided to begin living and teaching abroad. After teaching in Greece and Italy, in 1970 Davis decided to live permanently in Tehran during the reign of the last Shah. As a result, he taught English at the University of Tehran, and married Afkham Darbandi, about whom he has since written and published many love poems, in 1974. After the Islamic Revolution, Dick and Afkham Davis fled to the United Kingdom and then moved to the United States, Davis began translating many of the greatest masterpieces of both ancient and modern Persian poetry into English.

Davis is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has been called, by The Times Literary Supplement, "our finest translator from Persian." Davis' original poetry has been just as highly praised. Davis' poetry collections have been chosen as books of the year by The Sunday Times (UK) in 1989; The Daily Telegraph (UK) in 1989; The Economist (UK) in 2002; The Washington Post in 2010, and The Times Literary Supplement (UK) in 2013.

Early life Davis was born on 18 April 1945 in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, but grew up in Withernsea, Yorkshire. He never knew his biological father, who left when Davis was two years old. His mother remarried soon afterwards and, even though his mother and stepfather were working-class people with very little education, they both read voraciously. Davis later recalled, "...there were many books around the house, and I was expected to read them like everyone else."William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Pages 251–253.

He later recalled, "Portsmouth is a big naval town with a large sailor population. It's a noisy, busy, and dirty place. Our Yorkshire home was in a small village by the sea. In the past, it had been primarily a fishing village, but that was winding down when I was a child, although the boats still went out in the morning to fish in the North Sea. But mainly the village was dependent on summer tourism. Yet I can still remember that whenever there were storms at sea, there was a particular hymn we always sang in school because the fathers of some of the boys still went out in their fishing boats. The hymn was O, Hear Us When We Cry to Thee, For Those in Peril on the Sea, and, to this day, I still can't hear that hymn without a lump in my throat."William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Pages 251–252.

Davis has said that he was very influenced by his stepfather, who had a passionate love of reading about world history. He added, "My stepfather, in many ways, is a very noble man, and he always was. He served in the Second World War and he was highly decorated for bravery. He never talked about it, but I'm certain he killed people in combat and felt quite terrible about it. When I was a very young boy, I remember him bringing a German guest into the home. In those days, it was a terrible thing to do in a little village. Naturally, the Germans had a terrible reputation in England during the 1950s. But he didn't care. He wanted to show his hospitality. A few years later, when I was about eight or nine, we had a West Indian staying in our house, and he was the first black person to ever appear in the village. My stepfather had befriended the young man in London, and he'd always had this belief that nation's shouldn't be isolated from each other."William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Pages 261–262.

Davis further recalls, "I was lucky because they decided to set up an experimental school, which they called a comprehensive school, which is quite similar to public schools in the U.S. Previously in England, when you went to a state school, you were divided into two groups at the age of eleven: those who went to grammar school and those who didn't. But, back then, they were considering allowing everyone to go to the same school, and our little rural community was chosen as a pilot area. Since this was unique and experimental at the time, it attracted some very dedicated and excellent teachers who moved to Withernsea. So even though I lived in a very small and isolated village, I had some extremely good teachers, and because of them I was able to go to Cambridge. I came from a family where nobody had ever been to University, let alone Cambridge, and I believe that if I'd gone to a regular state school and didn't have all those dedicated teachers, I probably wouldn't have made it."William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Page 252.

Davis has credited the English master at the Withernsea school, John Gibson, with instilling in him a love of poetry. Davis adds that by the time he "went up to Cambridge," he had, "pretty well read the entire canon of English poetry." Gibson once urged Davis to read John Milton's Paradise Lost over summer break. Another summer, Davis was urged to read William Wordsworth's The Prelude.William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Page 253.

Davis has also said, "As an adolescent, one of my favorite books was Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat, which, as you know, is a very romanticized version of Iran. Fitzgerald had himself never visited Iran and, as a matter of fact, he never got as further east than Paris. So his translation presents a kind of imaginative vision of Iran, one which I found very attractive."William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Page 257.

Davis has said that his favorite poets during school were William Blake, D.H. Lawrence, and American poet Emily Dickinson. He commented, "Somehow I discovered Dickinson, which was strange back then because American poetry was never taught in English schools. But somehow I got ahold of her poems, and I loved them and imitated them. I loved the epigrammatic aspect of her work – poems that were short, sharp, and to the point, and I thought to myself: 'That's the kind of poetry I want to write.'"William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Page 254.

Cambridge Davis attended King's College, Cambridge,William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Page 254-255. where he was introduced to Persian and Indian literature through his friendship with E.M. Forster and to San Francisco LGBT poet Thom Gunn.

When asked if he had ever attempted to write free verse, Davis replied, "I tried it for a very short time, less than a year, when I was about eighteen. Back then, it seemed to be what people were doing, and what you were supposed to do. But I very quickly realized that I wasn't interested in writing free verse. I think it was Raymond Chandler who once said you should write the kind of novels that you'd like to read, and I'd never particularly enjoyed reading free verse. I read it dutifully, of course. I read Gunn's free verse because I admired Gunn so much, and I read a lot of the American free verse poets, but I never wanted to do it myself."William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Page 255.

Davis also recalled, however,

Inside the Shah's Iran According to Davis, "I left Cambridge in my early twenties, and I taught first in Greece and then in Italy, but I was feeling the urge to go somewhere outside of Europe, and a friend of mine who'd been working as an archaeologist in Iran said it was a wonderful country and that he was planning to teach there for a while. So he said, 'Why don't you come, too? We can share an apartment.' So that's what I did. I got a job teaching English at Tehran University on a two year contract. During that time, I fell in love with the woman I'd eventually marry, so when the two year contract ended, I looked for another job so I could stay in Iran and be near her and get married."William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Page 255-256.

Of his relationship with his wife Afkham Darbandi Davis has said, "There were, of course problems because her parents were very much against it. It was the usual concerns, marrying a foreigner, we don't know who he is and all of that. So I stayed in Iran for two more years, and we were married in 1974."William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Page 256.

After their wedding in Tehran, the Davises had their honeymoon in Cochin, India, which Davis has since memorialized in the love poem, Memories of Cochin.William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Page 267.

When asked about the many other love poems addressed to his wife, Davis replied, "It's often occurred to me that there are so few poems that celebrate love within a marriage. It's been suggested that Petrarch would never have written all his sonnets to Laura if he'd slept with her. But marriage exists all over the world, and it's very real for many people. It's not some fantasy or illusion, and it's something I've always wanted to write about. As for my children, they're immensely important to me. You certainly don't want to burden them with your emotions; but, on the other hand, the emotions are still there, and I've tried to write about it. I must admit that I find those poems very hard to write, much more difficult than writing poems about my wife."William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Page 266.

When asked whether he and Afkham were ever at risk during the Islamic Revolution and the fall of the Pahlavi dynasty, Davis said, "There was certainly danger out there, of course, but I never felt specifically in danger because I was a Westerner. In fact, my students would often try to protect me, saying, 'There's going to be a big demonstration downtown, and it's going to be at such-and-such a time and such-and-such a place, so don't go down there. Or, if I wanted to go out of curiosity, they'd say, 'If you really need to go, then we'll go along and make sure you're okay.' The people who experienced the real hostility in Tehran were the people associated with Western Governments. As for the rest of us, Iranians would often say things like, 'Tell people in your country what's happening here. The world should know.' So I personally never had any problems, but my wife and I did have an apartment on a main road where there were many demonstrations, and sometimes there was shooting going on. We lived on the third floor, with large plate-glass windows, and we could look out and see the tanks outside, and that didn't feel too good. At the time, we had a couple of friends who were Indians who lived on a back street, and they said, 'Why don't you come and stay with us until all this quiets down?' So we moved in with them for about three weeks, but it soon became clear that it wasn't going to quiet down in the foreseeable future, so we made arrangements to leave the country."

The Davises left Iran for the United Kingdom in November 1978.

Life as refugees