In this episode of Next Up to The Mic, we welcome Melody Davis who was our featured poet at the Poets Speak Loud open mic series at McGeary’s in downtown Albany, NY on April 30, 2018.
Dan Wilcox was at the reading and wrote,
The night’s featured poet was Melody Davis who began with her latest book One Ground Beetle: A Year in Haiku (Bad Cat Press, 2017), with prints by Harold Lohner. It was Show & Tell with Melody reading a haiku or two, then holding up the book to show the colorful print on the facing page. There were haiku on, of course, trees, clouds, birds, round stones, but also on Albany & on meetings. Then on to her 2013 collection of poems Holding the Curve (Broadstone Books), reading the ekphrastic “Caillebotte’s Laundry,” “Walter, the Lawyer,” the villanelle “It Only Starts,” & “Jasmine Boy, Cairo.” She finished up with a “new/old poem” about having hors d’oeuvres at the top of the World Trade Center, & a poem for a trapeze artist, “8 Different Ways to Fall.” A pleasant reading of richly varied poems.
Melody Davis, a writer and art historian, is the author of three poetry collections, most recently, a special edition artists’ book, One Ground Beetle, with Harold Lohner (2017); and Holding the Curve (2013) from Broadstone Books. Her work in the history of photography has been published widely. In 2015, she published Women’s Views: The Narrative Stereograph in Nineteenth-Century America with the University Press of New Hampshire.
Davis has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Henry Luce Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts, MetroArts (PA), and she was a finalist in the National Poetry Series. She holds a Ph.D. from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and is an Associate Professor of Art History at Russell Sage College in Troy NY.
Please welcome, next up to the mic, Melody Davis.
Bonus Video
Interview with Melody Davis on WMHT’s AHA! A House for Arts
Music Credit
Our theme music was “Imagination” by Danijel Zambo. License code: 44TCGFPF1L1434BE
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