In The Field: Conversations With Our Contributors—Davi Gray

Your poem, “Caravan of Wounds,” crafts a dramatic setting and builds a world where pain and injury are clearly visible. Where did the inspiration for this piece come from?

I have consumed a lot of dread-inspiring media, more written words than anything else, but it does capture the imagination. I’ve especially relished, at times, the works of Clive Barker, Ted Chiang, N. K. Jemisin, China Miéville, Jesmyn Ward (more present-apocalypse than anything). 

I wrote the first draft after waking up from a dream, which provided the storyline. The core images and idea, though, of traveling through a world where pain and injury are clearly visible to anyone looking—that’s what the world has been all my life. 

I feel like the line, “Freedom is a longing / in every piece and part, duct tape a wonder // for holding selves together” really grounds the reader in both the world you’ve created, and our real world. Can you talk about this line and its significance in the poem?

I think that freedom, or what we (I) think of as freedom, is something most people want, or think they want, and sometimes conceive of as separation from “others,” as if a world with a single person in it were a paradise. In the poem, “every piece and part” (of a body, of a community) thinks/feels it would be better off away from the rest. As in life, that may not turn out to be the case. We hold ourselves together (as bodies, as communities) as best we can with materials at hand.

This work carries such distinct visuals that it could have been extended into a longer story. What made a poem the perfect vehicle for this piece?

My general inclination is more toward poetry than prose, in part because I deeply love poetry and have all my life, and in part because I’m better at completing shorter works. I can write prose, and have, but it’s a discrete set of tools with only some overlap. Perhaps someday a film….

The turn in the last stanza—towards a feeling of community and togetherness —gives hope to the reader, even though it is still honest in its vivid descriptions of desperation. What do you think this turn does for the poem? For the idea of humanity?

I think it’s far too easy to give up hope, and though hope by itself doesn’t do much, if anything, for some situations, it does open up the space of possibilities. For many people, the world is a desperate and dire place most of the time, and yet we go on. We do the best we can with what we have until we are no longer here. I want to acknowledge that, the good and the bad, and work with others to stitch together what songs we can.

What themes do you find you return to in your writing?

Nature is a constant presence, whether it’s directly visible or not. History, myth, religion. Race, class, money, and politics are deeply woven into much of my work. Trauma shows up a lot, in the form of childhood, memory, death, loss, incarceration, grief, self-harm, and the body. I also have a fair number of works about poetry itself (as Michael Torres thoughtfully pointed out).

What books inspire you? Who are some of your favorite authors? 

Some inspiring recent reads have been Christina Sharpe (Ordinary Notes), Ross Gay (everything), Billy-Ray Belcourt (A History of My Brief Body), and Danez Smith (Bluff). I’m really looking forward to the forthcoming memoir, “My Weight in Water,” by Michael Kleber-Diggs.

What are you currently working on?

I’ve got multiple poetry manuscripts for which I’m seeking publishers. I’m also working on a hybrid/cross-genre book of poetry, essays, and visual art. I have a one-person poetical play I hope to find a theatrical home for later this year. I’m producing a podcast with a possible summer or fall launch. I continue to work with the ReEntry Lab, which is an organization building bridges between formerly incarcerated writers and artists and communities ready to receive them. And, of course, there are always the poems.

Davi Gray (they/she) is a queer, trans, nonbinary poet, writer, storyteller, artist, activist, and abolitionist. Their work has appeared in Poetry, Hayden’s Ferry Review, NonBinary Review, Rogue Agent, and elsewhere. They received Honorable Mention in the 2023 Muriel Craft Bailey Poetry contest and have won several prizes in PEN America Prison Writing Contests. They live in North Minneapolis (Bde Óta Othúnwe), on unceded lands of the Dakota and Ojibwe, and can often be found performing their poetry around the Twin Cities.