Soon after graduating in Philosophy and Physics at Oxford, David Knowles abandoned a long-standing ambition to become a philosopher – in order to train as a pilot in the RAF. During the whole of his twenty-five-year RAF career David was assigned to flying duties, and for most of that time on front-line Tornado ground-attack squadrons, amassing over 3000 flight hours on one of the most potent airborne weapons systems of its day. From the closing years of the Cold War, through a decade of peace-keeping, the military victory in Iraq and then into its aftermath – David was strapped into the cockpit trying to make sense of what he was seeing, experiencing and participating in. Awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross for actions during the opening phase of the invasion of Iraq, David has first-hand experience of aspects of modern warfare which have scarcely been touched upon in poetry before.
In 2008 David retired from the RAF to run independent publishing house Two Ravens Press with his wife, fellow writer Sharon Blackie. He now lives on a working croft in the Outer Hebrides and in his spare time looks after his small flock of Hebridean sheep. His short fiction has been published in two anthologies; Meeting the Jet Man is his first poetry collection, and it was shortlisted for the Scottish Arts Council First Book of the Year award, 2009. A poem from it, So What Does It Feel Like? was Highly Commended in the Forward Prize and included in the 2010 Forward Book of Poetry.
To read an interview with David, please click on the ‘Interview’ page on the right sidebar.
