RC Davis created his first poem when he was about eight years old. “I wrote something about a river, but I don’t remember that,” the Oak Park and River Forest High School senior admitted.
The 17-year-old Oak Park resident, who recently attracted national acclaim as a poet, does remember the first poem he was proud to have written. “It was the one I did my freshman year for ‘Louder Than a Bomb,’ the Chicago spoken word competition,” Davis said. “It was about gender and my family and it had some metaphors in it that I was proud of. That’s when I sort of started to see myself as a writer.”
Davis is not the only one who sees him as a writer. He was chosen as one of five 2021 National Student Poets from thousands of students in grades 10-11 who submitted more than 19,000 works. The program, a partnership between Scholastic’s Alliance for Young Writers and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, was started in 2012 by First Lady Michele Obama. Davis, who represents the Midwest Region of the United States, will be officially appointed in Washington D.C. in September.
“I started really getting into poetry when I started high school and joined my school’s Spoken Word Club,” Davis related. “That’s when my interest took off.”
A poem that Davis wrote when he was 15 will be in an anthology being published by his Spoken Word Club in February. “I don’t see myself as the same person. I think I’m a very different writer now,” Davis admitted. “But I’m also kind of proud of my younger self.”
His work has undergone some significant changes, though, he related. “I think I’ve grown more honest with myself in my writing,” Davis said. “When I first started out in poetry I was trying to make things sound good; make things sound poetic. I was trying to be someone I wasn’t. Now when I go to the page, it’s a more truthful thing. I’m also less concerned about staying linear.”
Davis credits that change to his move away from spoken word to creating poems meant to be read.
“Spoken word poetry, because it’s performed, the audience only hears it once. You have to have a clear arc,” he explained. “I’ve gradually moved towards more page-oriented stuff that allows me to jump from subject to subject in a way that’s more organic to my thoughts.”
To further develop his talent, Davis has taken summer workshops, including one through the Northwestern University Center for Talent Development. This summer, he attended a virtual six-week youth poetry mentorship program through “The Adroit Journal,” an online literary magazine.
“I’ve been lucky to receive a lot of help and encouragement with my writing,” Davis said.
He was a winner of the 2019 Gwendolyn Brooks Youth Poetry Award and has had poems published in “Driftwood,” “Blue Marble Review,” and “3Elements Review.” He is an apprentice editor for “BreakBread Literary Magazine.”
Davis decided to try for national recognition and submitted four poems to the National Student Poet competition.
“I didn’t think about it for several months,” Davis said. “I found out I had won a national medal, which meant I was eligible to become a National Student Poet. I submitted additional poems. I did some videos of myself talking about poetry.”
As a National Student Poet, Davis will have to complete a service project. He hasn’t yet chosen that project.
Through whatever project he chooses, Davis plans to “spread the notion that poetry can be for everyone,” he said. “The idea that writing and reading poetry can benefit people, even people who don’t think it would be their thing.”
It’s definitely Davis’ thing. “I’ve found that through poetry I’m able to share things that I wouldn’t be comfortable sharing otherwise and connect with people on a deeper level that I’m not able to in my day-to-day life,” he said.
Below is a poem by RC Davis, printed with permission.
Promise
By RC Davis
I promise never to charge
my phone on the rim of the bathtub
or cut off my finger tips
with a kitchen knife. If I know
one thing, it’s how to touch
the wax of a mosquito candle without
feeling any burn. This summer,
the dog eats cicadas in the grass
and I dream that I’m a duck
or something else with wings
(In the end I am swallowed once again
by my own skin, riding a bicycle backwards
down a hill). In a poem that isn’t
this one, I keep asking
for my parents’ pride
to never change its shape. I ask
the birds and each blade
of grass, mostly my own mouth
in the mirror. Canyon of teeth
singing a song too low
for my vocal range. Someday,
I will tattoo a window
on each of my shoulders. To let some light in,
I suppose, like a pair of glasses
in a movie, setting fire to a leaf.
Dollop of sun then everything
begins burning. I’m not sure
what I’m supposed to taste when
we say words like future. I promise you,
that if I ever have a child of my own
my hands won’t shake so much
that I drop them on the tile. I’ll remember
some of the words of my father’s
lullabies. We’ll count
the dead flies on the windowsill,
then I’ll turn over a tree stump
and show the swarm
underneath. Look, the moon is a paper plate
that’s been lit on fire. Watch it
curl into a toenail clipping.
Watch the night swallow
us in our pajama pants
and whispers. Today,
what I’m asking
is for my parents to call me son
before one of us is dead.
If you look directly at the sun
it leaves blue spots everywhere
and I’m sitting here, painting my nails
with the blood from my mosquito bites.
