ALAN DAVIES – PART E – CURRICULUM VITAE

Alan Davies attended high school in Newfoundland, where he started both a student newspaper and a literary magazine.  He attended Atlantic Union College in rural Massachusetts, where he was editor of a newspaper, literary editor of the yearbook, and twice president of the student council.  He was regularly published in the literary magazine and successfully published and marketed a book by a fellow poet.  He received the Rochelle P. Kilgore Prize for Poetry.  He graduated cum laude in 1972, with departmental honors in English.

Alan Studied with Robert Creeley at Harvard University during the summer of 1972.  The course was entitled Readings in Modern Poetry.  While he was alive Robert Creeley continued to support Alan’s work, recommending him several times for grants.  Alan met at that time a number of poets in the generation ahead of him, and particularly befriended John Wieners, with whom he was friends for many years, and from whom he learned a great deal.

He started the poetry magazine A Hundred Posters, of which nearly fifty issues were published over the next couple of years.  Three issues of Oculist Witnesses were also published.  And he began to edit and publish the press called Other Publications.

He also took a couple of classes that Octavio Paz taught at Harvard.  The courses dealt with the intricacies of surrealism and with other concerns as Mr. Paz experienced and saw them.  Mr. Paz was also kind enough to positively critique Alan’s writing.

Alan began to have his own work published regularly.  His books began to appear (see list of publications) and he wrote extensively for many literary magazines.  His writing included book reviews, critical essays, aphorisms, and other literary forms, as well as poetry. 

During the summer of 1977 he was assistant to Anne Waldman and Allen Ginsberg, co-directors of The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.  His responsibilities included coordinating such events as student workshops and readings.  He took a course with William Burroughs there, and attended many readings and workshops.  He became friendly with many other writers who taught at or otherwise passed through that literary milieu.

In New York City he became familiar with and befriended his literary peers, with whom he gave and organized readings, published books and magazines, and about many of whom he wrote in his critical articles and book reviews.  He read and lectured widely, both in the United States and Canada.  He was invited to participate in a literary conference in Tenerife in the Canary Islands, the focus of which was contemporary Canadian poetry.

He has continued to write and to publish, with his long-anticipated book LIFE expected later this year.  Sections of an ongoing project, projected to be lifelong, have been published, and another section is slated for publication late in 2006.  And more articles are about to be published as well.