Talking With Poets: Melody Davis at Poets Speak Loud

Thom Francis welcomes Melody Davis to the Poets Speak Loud stage at McGeary’s in downtown Albany, NY.

Melody Davis, a writer and art historian, is the author of three poetry collections, including a special edition artists’ book, One Ground Beetle, with Harold Lohner; and Holding the Curve. 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 the Sage College of Albany.

On April 30, 2018, Davis was the featured poet at the long-running series hosted by Mary Panza. She began her reading with work from her 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. The haiku were on trees, clouds, birds, round stones, Albany, and work meetings. She then read from her collection of poems Holding the Curve (Broadstone Books), “Caillebotte’s Laundry” and “Walter, the Lawyer.”