Arts and Entertainment

Rolling Reading Series to feature poet and Penn State Professor Todd Davis

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Award-winning poet Todd Davis, known for his lyric meditations on the natural beauty of his Pennsylvania home ground, will offer a reading as part of the Mary E. Rolling Reading Series. The free public reading will be held at 7:30 pm. on Thursday, Nov. 14, in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium.

Award-winning poet Todd Davis, known for his lyric meditations on the natural beauty of his Pennsylvania home ground, will offer a reading as part of the Mary E. Rolling Reading Series. Davis is also a professor of English and environmental studies at Penn State Altoona.  Credit: Penn StateCreative Commons

Publishers Weekly praised Davis’ ability to “bring readers into a world rife with danger and darkness as well as quietude and splendor” and “reverently observe nature’s own poetry and how it illuminates the process of change.”

Davis is the author of seven collections of poetry: "Ripe" (2002), "Some Heaven" (2007), "The Least of These" (2010), "Household of Water, Moon, & Snow: The Thoreau Poems" (2010), "In the Kingdom of the Ditch" (2013), "Winterkill" (2016), and most recently, "Native Species" (2019).  

"Native Species," published by the Michigan State University Press, explores the questions of humanity’s uncertain place in nature and what happens to the souls of all creatures after death. Harvard Review proclaimed it “unflinchingly candid and enduringly compassionate.”

Todd Davis’ poetry has been featured in diverse outlets, from the newspaper column "American Life in Poetry," edited by Ted Kooser, to anthologies such as "The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry," to many noted journals and magazines including American Poetry Review, Iowa Review, and North American Review.

His work has been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize and has won the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize, Chautauqua Editor’s Prize, and the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year silver and bronze awards. Davis has also edited several collections of essays, including "Fast Break to Line Break: Poets on the Art of Basketball" (2012).

Davis is a professor of English and environmental studies at Penn State Altoona, as well as a Fellow in the Black Earth Institute — a think tank that promotes the arts to link the environment, spirituality, and community in an inclusive way. Learn more about Davis and his poetry on his website.

The Mary E. Rolling Series is a program offered by Penn State’s Creative Writing Program in English, which receives generous support from the College of the Liberal Arts, the Department of English, the Joseph L. Grucci Poetry Endowment, the Mary E. Rolling Lectureship in Creative Writing, and University Libraries. The full list of readings in the 2019–20 series can be found online at https://creativewriting.psu.edu/.

Davis' most recent book, Native Species, explores the questions of humanity’s uncertain place in nature and what happens to the souls of all creatures after death. Credit: ProvidedAll Rights Reserved.

Last Updated November 8, 2019

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