DAVIS McCOMBS
555 North Cato Springs Road Fayetteville, AR 72701 (479) 966-5618 (home) (479) 575-2319 (work) [email protected] ______
EDUCATION
• Stanford University, Palo Alto, California. Two-year Wallace Stegner Fellowship in poetry. 1996-1998.
• University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia. Masters of Fine Arts (Poetry), June 1995. Henry Hoyns Fellowship.
• Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. A.B. in English and American Literature, June 1993. Dean’s List all four years. Harvard College Scholarship for academic achievement.
TEACHING
• University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas.
Associate Professor, Department of English. 2007 to present.
Director, Program in Creative Writing and Tranlsation, 2005 to present.
Roper Endowed Chair in Creative Writing, 2007-2014.
Assistant Professor, Department of English. 2002 to 2007.
OTHER WORK EXPERIENCE
• Mammoth Cave National Park. Park Ranger, Division of Fee Collection. Lead Ranger in charge of three campgrounds. 2000-2001.
• Mammoth Cave National Park. Park Ranger, Division of Interpretation. Conducted cave tours and nature walks. Presented interpretive historical and environmental programs and talks. Summers 1991-1992, 1996-1999.
• Poetry magazine. Editorial Assistant. Member of three-person editorial board. 1995-1996.
AWARDS
• Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize. My third poetry collection, lore, chosen by Linda Bierds for publication on University of Utah Press (April 2016). $2000.
• Porter Fund Literary Prize. For a distinguished Arkansas writer. $2000
• Laman Library Writer’s Fellowship. Walter F. Laman Public Library, Little Rock, AR, 2013. $10,000.
• Pushcart Prize. Awarded to “First Hard Freeze,’ poem first published in Indiana Review.
• Best Second Book, Contemporary Poetry Review. Awarded to Dismal Rock for the best second book of poetry published in 2007.
• Kentucky Literary Award. Awarded to Dismal Rock. $1000 for the best book of poetry published in 2007 by a Kentuckian or about Kentucky.
• Eric Hoffer Award. Awarded to Dismal Rock for the best poetry collection published by an independent press in 2007.
• The Best American Poetry 2008. “The Last Wolf in Edmonson County” (poem) chosen by Charles Wright from Poetry.
• Dorset Prize. $10,000 and publication of my second poetry collection, Dismal Rock, on Tupelo Press in Fall 2007. Judge: Linda Gregerson.
• Individual Artist Fellowship, Arkansas Arts Council. $4,000 fellowship in poetry. 2007.
• Vachel Lindsay Poetry Award, Willow Springs. “Rossetti in 1869,” awarded $400 and publication. 2005.
• Larry Levis Editor’s Prize, The Missouri Review. Sixteen-poem sequence, “Tobacco Mosaic,” awarded $2,000 and publication. 2005.
• Joy Bale Boone Award. “Noodling” (poem) awarded $500 and publication in Wind magazine. 2005.
• National Endowment for the Arts. “Tobacco Mosaic” proposal awarded $20,000 grant. 2002.
• Kentucky Arts Council. $5,000 Individual Artist Grant. 2001.
• Jim Wayne Miller Prize. “Moonbow” (poem) awarded first prize of $500. 2000.
• National Book Critics Circle Award. My first book, Ultima Thule, selected as one of five finalists. 2001
• Yale Younger Poets Award. Ultima Thule, chosen from over seven hundred manuscripts by W. S. Merwin for publication by Yale University Press. 2000.
• Tom McAfee Discovery Prize, The Missouri Review. Nineteen-part sonnet sequence, “Ultima Thule,” selected and published. 1998.
• The Best American Poetry 1996. “The River and Under the River” (poem) chosen by Adrienne Rich from no roses review.
• Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship. $15,000 for one year of poetry study and practice, 1993.
• Lloyd McKim Garrison Prize. Awarded to a Harvard undergraduate for poetic excellence, 1993. Judge: Helen Vendler.
• The Harvard Advocate. First Place in annual poetry competition, 1993. First Place in annual poetry competition, 1992.
• The Harvard Independent. First place in annual poetry competition. 1992
• Roger Conant Hatch Prize for Lyric Poetry. First Place, best lyric poem by a Harvard Undergraduate, 1992. Judge: Seamus Heaney.
PUBLICATIONS
• Books I am the author of three collections of poetry, Ultima Thule (Yale University Press, 2000), Dismal Rock (Tupelo Press, 2007), and lore (University of Utah Press, 2016).
• Poems My poems have appeared in 32 Poems, American Poetry Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Bat City Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Crazyhorse, Cream City Review,
Cumberland River Poetry Review, Gulf Stream, The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, The Harvard Advocate, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Heartland Review, Indiana Review, Insurance, The Journal, The Kenyon Review, Melee, The Missouri Review, The New Yorker, Nimrod, no roses review, Oxford American, Pleiades, Plume, Poetry, The Rumpus, Shenandoah, Smartish Pace, Subtropics, Tears in the Fence, Virginia Quarterly Review, Washington Square, Willow Springs, and Wind.
• Features and Interviews I have been featured or interviewed in forums as diverse as National Public Radio’s Morning Edition with Bob Edwards, CNN. com, Wind, Limestone, Harvard Magazine, The Courier-Journal, Oxford American, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Lexington Herald-Leader, the Miami Herald, San Jose Mercury News, Washington Times, the Hanover Sun, Kentucky Educational Television (PBS), and many others.
• Reviews My work has been reviewed favorably in many publications, including The New York Times, Parnassus, Poetry, The Missouri Review, Publisher’s Weekly, Library Journal, and Contemporary Poetry Review.
• Anthologies Thirty-five of my poems have been reprinted in eleven anthologies: The Best American Poetry 1996 (Scribner 1996), The Kentucky Anthology: Two Hundred Years of Writing in the Bluegrass State (University Press of Kentucky, 2005), Missing Mountains: Kentuckians Write Against Mountaintop Removal (Wind Publications, 2005), Under the Rock Umbrella: Contemporary American Poets from 1951 to 1977 (Mercer University Press, 2006), Field Work: Modern Poems from Eastern Forests (University Press of Kentucky, 2008), The Best American Poetry 2008 (Scribner, 2008), What Comes Down To Us: 25 Contemporary Kentucky Poets (University Press of Kentucky, 2009), Apocalypse Now: Poems and Prose From the End of Days (Upper Rubber Boot Books, 2012), Red Holler: Contemporary Appalachian Literature (Sarabande, 2013), The Ecopoetry Anthology (Trinity University Press, 2013), and Pushcart Prize XXXVI (W. W. Norton, 2013).
• Articles Two scholarly articles have been published about my work, Dr. Jeraldine Kraver’s (University of Northern Colorado) “Southern Shadows: Mammoth Cave Meets Plato’s Cave in Davis McCombs’ Ultima Thule” and Dr. Scott Van Der Ploeg’s (Madisonville Community College) “Reading the Caves of Davis McCombs.” Dr. Van Der Ploeg’s article appeared in Journal of Kentucky Studies. Dr. Kraver’s article, along with a group of my poems, appeared in the Fall 2006 issue of CrossRoads: A Southern Culture Annual.
SELECTED READINGS
• Darragh Center, Central Arkansas Library, Little Rock, AR, October 1, 2015 “A Prized Evening” (at which I was presented the 2015 Porter Fund Literary Prize, $2000).
• Owensboro Technical and Community Collge, Owensboro, KY, March, 19, 2014 Common Reading Program, 10th Anniversary Celebration.
• Walter F. Laman Public Library, Little Rock, AR, January 4, 2013 Reading at which I was presented the 2013 Walter F. Laman Public Library Writers Fellowship, $10,000.
• Sarabande Books, Louisville, KY, May 23, 2011
• University of Louisiana, Monroe, LA, November 10, 2010
• United States Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., November 18, 2008 Three Yale Younger Poets
• University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS, April 8, 2005 Oxford Festival of the Book
• University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, March 4, 2005 Bale Boone Symposium: Growing Kentucky (reading with Wendell Berry and Barbara Kingsolver)
• Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, November 5, 2004 Devil’s Kitchen Literary Festival
• University of Missouri, Rolla, MO, April 15, 2004
• University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, March 6, 2004 Bale Boone Symposium: Three Yale Younger Poets
• Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, May 22, 2001
• University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, March 22, 2001 Virginia Festival of the Book
• Lipscomb University, Nashville, TN, November 9, 2000 The Landiss Lecture
• Murray State University, Murray, KY, October 10, 2000 The James O. Overby Kentucky History and Culture Series
SELECTED REVIEWS
Ultima Thule
...the finest Yale Poets selection in years. —Publisher’s Weekly
It's always interesting to see what will be chosen next for the renowned "Yale Series of Younger Poets," and last year's choice proved particularly strong: it went on to become a National Book Critics Circle finalist. —Library Journal
...translucent, musical language...!...urgent images that strikingly illuminate darkened interior spaces. —Megan Harlan, The New York Times
!McCombs displays a quiet wisdom, precise, confident voice, and accomplished technique that, together, enable his poems to effect acts of elegant transformation. —Adam L. Dressler, Perihelion (www.webdelsol.com)
!...his linkings of natural and spiritual grandeur give us contemporary examples of what was once known as the poetry of the sublime...With his caves and cave guides, McCombs widens our vision, reminding us that there are landscapes and occupations which do not often turn up in poetry, yet remain worthy of poetic attention. —Jack Anderson, American Book Review
Dismal Rock
Reading Davis McCombs’s second collection, Dismal Rock...is a little like putting on your first pair of corrective glasses: language sharpens and well-defined things...suddenly come into focus. —Jason Guriel, Poetry
McCombs’s skill, his ability to recreate whole worlds in a poem of fifteen or twenty lines– worlds with their own histories, geographies, lexicons, and characters–is complex and almost novelistic in its scope and richness. —Craig Beaven, Blackbird
McCombs is an intelligent, focused poet who always aims to match a poem’s intellectualism with emotional depth, and Dismal Rock is a proud testament to his ability. Kyle Churney, Rain Taxi!
McCombs is wonderful with details...a careful poet who looks thoroughly. —Publishers Weekly
Through naturalistic imagery and down-to-earth diction, the poems in Dismal Rock radiate a nostalgic Southern charm...It is this love of what has been, is being, and will be lost that gives Dismal Rock, if not the full sorrow of elegy, all the beauty and bittersweetness of eulogy. —Adam L. Dressler, Contemporary Poetry Review
lore
…an extraordinary book… the creation of an immensely talented poet —Linda Bierds, Contest Judge