American Corner Innsbruck
Professor William V. Davis
A POETRY READING
May 26, 2011, 4.30 p.m., 50101/SR1 (GeiWi-building, 1st floor)
Following words of welcome by ACI Director Prof. Dr. Gudrun Grabher, who congratulated tonight’s lecturer on his birthday, the audience was introduced to the fascinating poetry of Dr. William V. Davis, Professor of English and Writer in Residence at Baylor University, Texas, USA.
Professor and poet Dr. William V. Davis has published his poems in many renowned journals as well as in several award-winning books. His poetry touches on a variety of topics, often exploring themes of family, landscape and traveling. Giving a sample of his poetry, Dr. Davis invited the audience on a journey through time and to different places. Not only did the audience enjoy listening to poems of his latest publication Landscape and Journey but also to earlier creations as well as verses that will be published in the near future. Dr. Davis often commented on his poetry, offering an additional insight into his poetical world. The audience was intrigued by Dr. William Davis, a poet who had already realized as a child, delivering newspapers, that he loved to carry words to people.
Tonight’s reading certainly whetted the appetite of anyone with an interest in poetry and was followed by a lively discussion between the poet and the audience.
(text: Christof Diem and Martina Netzer)
William V. Davis is an award-winning poet and critic. He has published more than 100 essays in scholarly periodicals as well as half a dozen books of literary criticism—most recently R. S. Thomas: Poetry and Theology (2007). As William Virgil Davis he has published four books of poetry and hundreds of poems in a wide variety of periodicals. His most recent book of poetry is Landscape and Journey, which won the New Criterion Poetry Prize and the Helen C. Smith Memorial Award for Poetry. His other books of poetry are: One Way to Reconstruct the Scene, which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize; The Dark Hours, which won the Calliope Press Chapbook Prize; and Winter Light. He has taught at several universities in the USA and as a visiting professor at the Universities of Vienna, Copenhagen, and Wales (Swansea). He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including three Senior Fulbright Fellowships, the James Sims Prize for American Literature, and various grants and fellowships in Creative Writing. He has given readings of his own poetry and lectured on nineteenth and twentieth-century British and American literature literally around the world. Currently, he is Professor of English and Writer-in-Residence at Baylor University.
