Poet Theresa Davis’ phrases on the Goat Farm as a part of the NEON POETRY challenge. (All photographs courtesy of Theresa Davis)
Theresa Davis by no means imagined her phrases would grow to be a luminous show in crimson atop certainly one of West Midtown’s cultural sizzling spots.
A extremely lauded poet, educator and creator, Davis fought the urge to create as a baby. She sought out stability and practicality, which might stifle her self acceptance and delay recognizing her authenticity and queer id.
“It [poetry] undoubtedly saved components of me that I believe have been making an attempt to atrophy, in a bizarre denial about the place I used to be speculated to go,” stated Davis, who has known as metro Atlanta house because the age of 11.
In September 2025, the St. Louis native’s poem was immortalized by Sprint Studio as part of its SITE exhibit on the Goat Farm Arts Heart. “Ring Your self Awake” is the primary iteration of NEON POETRY, an ongoing lyrical and text-based collection of sculptures from Sprint Studio.
“The response has been overwhelmingly optimistic, particularly from our studio tenants and residents who’re realizing it’s right here to remain,” stated Allie Bashuk, arts and cultural curator at Goat Farm. “These [tenants] with home windows overlooking the work have been particularly delighted to get up every day to its considerate message.”
After accepting her queerness, Davis opened herself as much as plenty of “boomerang moments” that helped her make room for her personal innate inventive talents, together with affirmations within the type of nationwide and regional awards. She’s now on a mission to make sure the subsequent technology finds their voice ahead of she did.
Roped into poetry
Rising up, Davis’ dad and mom, Alice Lovelace and Charles Jikky Riley, would journey the nation performing poetry collectively and instructing. Their love of phrases, libraries, science, historical past and tradition made an impression on their daughter.
“They have been each poets, and they also have been doing what I do now again within the ’70s, earlier than it was really a factor,” Davis advised ArtsATL. “You sort of get roped into being [told] that you just’re going to carry out a poem at this occasion.”
She spent her teen years studying a number of anthologies of poets together with Patricia Smith, Claude McKay and Nikky Finney. However even with all of the inventive vitality round her at house and at her fingertips, Davis was drawn to the tutorial world first. Her dad and mom’ dedication to the humanities regardless of the monetary pressure was inspiring, nevertheless it didn’t attraction to her, so she got down to be a trainer to pay the payments. She additionally thought of turning into a journalist.
“You understand how typically you wish to make these choices, however you additionally know that issues value cash — your abdomen is hungry, and you must put one thing in there,” Davis stated.
However even when she began instructing for cash and stability, Davis now maintains she loves each writing and instructing and realizes they’ll work collectively.
“I like the concept of having the ability to float between each — to have the ability to be on an educational facet and the crafting facet of poetry,” she stated. “I can break down these parts and have the ability to talk it with different individuals.”
Her boomerang second
Educating took Davis on a 30-year journey, nevertheless it wasn’t a remaining vacation spot. As she started to note indicators of melancholy in herself within the late Nineties and early 2000s, she additionally acknowledged that being married to a person was not her final cease, both. Her discontent needed to do together with her denial of her sexuality.
Her father took word of her discontent, at the same time as his well being was failing after a stroke in 2003. In one of many final weeks of his life, he insisted on having a dialog together with her. Talking in a loud voice, which he hardly ever did, the lifelong musician and poet advised Davis to “cease making an attempt to vanish.”
Every week later, he died.
“After his memorial, I made a decision that I used to be going to be seen. I used to be going to indicate up in my life,” Davis stated. “I knew he was speaking about me being an artist and a bunch of different stuff, like, cease hiding who you might be. Cease being sad since you’re not straight. I simply had so many boomerang moments in my physique.”
Ringing herself awake
As her dad’s phrases echoed, Davis discovered herself divorced, residing her life absolutely as a homosexual lady and acting at open mics throughout Atlanta within the years after his dying. She met her longtime good friend Nate Masks at a kind of open mics at Java Monkey in 2011. The guy poets shared their work as Davis turned a mainstay on the Decatur espresso store over time. They each carried out as a slam workforce in 2017.
“I can bear in mind the primary time she advised me she appreciated certainly one of my poems, simply pondering to myself, ‘I made it! Theresa Davis likes my poem!’” Masks stated.
Davis’ native aptitude for slam poetry started to result in the nationwide stage. She managed to get on the wait listing for the Ladies of the World Poetry Slam competitors in 2011. The occasion in Columbus, Ohio, featured greater than 70 slam poets from throughout the globe. She had arrived on the competitors with no expectations. Two hours earlier than the slam started, she realized a poet one spot forward of her missed her flight. With a close to good rating in each spherical, Davis gained the worldwide slam competitors with a poem about her dad titled “Why I do that.”
“I went from not being within the competitors to successful the competitors, and it was sort of a kind of moments the place I felt like I’d lastly gotten out of my means. And as soon as alternative knocks, it simply begins kicking doorways open for you,” she stated.
One other open door got here within the type of a e book deal Davis landed because of her poem “Respiration Classes,” about an early love affair with a lady. The completed e book, After This We Go Darkish, was printed in 2013. The town of Atlanta even devoted a day to her, which occurs on Could 22 yearly. In 2017, her e book Mermaid’s Manifesto was featured on the “E book All Georgians Ought to Learn” listing, and she or he was named Artistic Loafing’s “Better of Poetry and Spoken Phrase” artist from 2016 by means of 2019.
Davis is in awe of what has occurred since her personal awakening. She now mentors writers and champions the written phrase as literary program director on the ArtsXchange in East Level. Her complete household, together with her mother Alice Lovelace and her daughter, lead packages there. Although her father couldn’t see any of it earlier than he left the Earth, Davis is aware of he’s watching.
“I’m like, ‘See, look, Dad. Individuals can see me,’” Davis stated. “I’m loving this a part of myself.”
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Stephanie Toone, a contract editor and author, has accrued bylines in publications comparable to The Atlanta Journal-Structure, The Tennessean, Civil Eats, Tough Draft Atlanta and extra. Exterior of journalism, she’s labored in nonprofit communications for areas that champion local weather and incapacity justice. She lives in metro Atlanta together with her son and enjoys a stable hike or karaoke night time.
