Joe Davis’ poetry is the art of listening

Joe Davis offers prayers and poetry to guide graduating seniors in his new book We Rise Higher. Photo by David Pierini

By David Pierini, Editor

Joe Davis writes with his ears.

Davis listens deeply to the life that moves around and through him. He produces poetry and music that reminds us to love, celebrate our authentic selves, and to seek humanity to dissolve the polarization of our times.

“I feel like what I create is only as good as my ability to listen,” Davis said. “Listen to my body, mind, spirit; listen to community; listen to my ancestors. How am I making enough space to listen? My art is a response to that question.”

Davis, a Northside resident, has a well-tuned ear for new high school graduates in his first published book, “We Rise Higher: Poems and Prayers for Graduates.”

At 35, Davis is well past this bridge, where youth takes a tentative first step toward adulthood and has become a self-styled shaper of culture.

He is an educator, both as an artist-in-residence in local schools, and as the co-creator of JUSTmove, a racial justice education program that employs art. He is the frontman of the soul-funk group, The Poetic Diaspora, which he says will drop its first album soon. He is also the director of a multimedia production program, The New Renaissance.

“We Rise Higher” couldn’t come at a better time. The Class of 2022 did not enjoy a carefree four years. There was a pandemic that isolated youth from their peers for months at a time, the civil unrest that followed the police murder of George Floyd, and most recently in Minneapolis, classrooms shuttered for three weeks while teachers went on strike.

It’s the type book he wishes he had as a high school senior.

“We’re all trying to survive, right? We’ve been on the struggle bus,” Davis said. “But one of the things I would tell students is just take your time. Slow down. We’re in a culture that oftentimes moves at this machine-like pace where we’re just expected to go, go, go, move through work. It’s all about the bottom line of what we’re able to produce, instead of finding yourself, finding each other.

“That’s what I do with poetry and music and that’s what this book is about. In large part, it says, like who you are, as you are. All of who you are is beautiful and worthy of love.”

“We Rise Higher” encourages self-care and what Davis calls communal care. Each is labeled “an Invitation.” One simply encourages the reader to regularly set aside time to reflect, another suggests writing a letter to an important person to express gratitude for their influence. The pages nurture self-confidence, offer reasons for gratitude and help navigate heavy emotions.

The book ends appropriately with a “Dreamer’s Manifesto” and a collective feeling that rising higher has begun.

So have book sales. Pre-orders sold out the first press run of the book and now more copies are available on Amazon or at joedavispoetry.com.

We Rise High is available on Amazon or at joedavispoetry.com

The conversation below will not give away the contents of the book. But it does offer a glimpse of Davis’ evolution as an artist. His wisdom should inspire the readers, especially a graduate-to-be, to pick up the book. The following is edited for brevity.

The creative kid: I always had a really big imagination. I wouldn’t necessarily identify as an artist, but I was already creating like music and poetry. I was coming with my own stories. My sister would babysit me when my parents were at work. So we would just come up with these games or do arts and crafts.

So I had a lot of creativity in my life as a kid. But I never knew that this would be my career. I just did it because it was fun and that’s what I loved to do.

When I was little, I got really sick with what was called atopic dermatitis. It is a severe skin condition and it was so bad that my skin could not protect me from outside infections. (Hospitalized for it), I reached for the nearest thing that could help me cope with what I was going through and that’s when creating became this emotional outlet, and this way of expressing what was for me difficult to talk about. I could just pour my heart and soul into my notebook.

Even to this day I have stacks of notebooks full of drawings, poems, songs, I would make my own comic books... That was my way of working through my experiences. And I found a lot of healing in that. I found a lot of empowerment and sense of identity. I think that is what helped me become the artist I am today.

Gentle molding: Some of those early experiences were first posted by my family and were kind of catalyzed by just going through struggles. I had teachers and mentors who thought I was a strong writer and that I should share this with other people. People in my life pushed me gently and eventually, I started to blossom and open up.

I realized that it impacted other people, I was like, if I can just touch one person’s life, that's what I wanted. It was in a sense a calling for sure.

Finding what is below the surface: When I’m working with young folks, I’m just listening and being attentive. Even as a writer, I’m listening and asking myself what are the words that need to be spoken to the community at this moment in this time. So I lead with questions. I ask them about their favorite things to do. What do you love? What are you passionate about? What makes you come alive? All I’m doing is creating a space for them to get to know each other and build relationships. They discover parts of themselves that they had not yet known. So it’s a lot of listening, a lot of affirming.

Some kids already know. You go into some classrooms and some students love theater, music, sports or whatever. Some students don’t have any idea. They feel kind of lost and confused. And so I just let them know, Hey, it’s ok. You’ve got time to figure it out. There’s no rush. I don’t have it all figured out. I let them know that. This all about the journey.

The power of gratitude: For me, it can bring the temperature down that day. For me, gratitude is one of my self-care practices. When I feel overwhelmed or when I look out into the world, especially in today’s day and age, there’s so much bad news. We shouldn’t even call it news. It should be called the worst things that are happening near you. We’re inundated with all this negativity.

What I am able to do is create the space to pause and just breathe and to be present and say, “Okay, what can I actually be grateful for with what is here, within me, around me, that I know is beautiful and is meant to give me life, give me health.” That’s when I have a deeper sense of roundedness and connectedness and centeredness.

The power of art: Music and poetry, in particular, has a way of taking the abstract and making it concrete and tangible. What I try to do through songs and through my poems is give examples of what’s possible.

To me, poetry is participatory. It’s not just about consuming the words. It’s about tasking the words and how the words engage your senses. How do you embody the words and so I wanted to try and invite the reader into that in some way, shape or form through the book.”

Be with others: All of who I am is because somebody loves me. I have people in my life reporting to me, my mom, my dad, my sister, even the larger community, teachers, mentors,

coaches who were consistent and kept showing up because they believed in me.

I want to remind and invite kids to connect and stay connected to each other. How do we practice community, the ways of being together? I think the world that we have now is because we haven’t been intentional about all of our practices. The second we start to become conscious and aware and intentional in our practices, that’s when we start to create more space for healing. What I would tell students is practice being you and being well and practice being in relationships. All of this work moves at the pace of relationships.

Advice to survive a polarized world: I have mentioned how important it is to listen. That, to me, really is a practice. It’s a spiritual practice and a discipline. I invite people by saying, “how do we listen long enough to hear the humanity. How do we have the grace and the patience and the intentionality to listen to each other?” We’re always going to have differences. When someone is dehumanizing you with their disagreements, that is the line that needs to be drawn, but aside from that, I think there are certainly ways to coexist. We have to figure out how to be a community or we’re not going to survive.

How do you listen to someone and share in a way that makes sense to them? If you’re not able to do that, you’re not truly listening to them. You’re just ready to respond. You’re just speaking out of your ego. We get stuck in these spirals of emotional reactiveness. Instead of pausing and reading and slowing down long enough to hear the humanity of another person, to hear the heart.

It’s not easy. It’s messy. It’s complicated. It’s uncomfortable. We’re not always going to get it right. I think when we do, the fruit of it is really beautiful.

Gather

Re-member to gather your selves,

All the parts of you that have been forgotten and forsaken: Gather joy in your soul,

gather wisdom in your spirit,

gather peace in your mind,

gather love in your heart,

gather healing in your body.

Re-member to gather ourselves

All the parts of us that have been forgotten and forsaken:

Gather your people,

gather those who have been made invisible, gather those who have been made unheard, gather those who are weak and weary, gather those who are bound and broken.

Gather together,

beyond want and need,

hands stretched open, palms set free, to call and respond, to give and receive.