UWG News Archive

English Professor receives Poetry Award

November 25, 2003

CARROLLTON, GA - Dr. Chad Davidson, assistant professor of English at the University of West Georgia, recently received the 2003 First Book Award of the Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry for his book Consolation Miracle.

The Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry has been published by Southern Illinois University Press since 1998. The judge for this year’s competition was Pulitzer Prize nominee Rodney Jones.

Davidson’s first collection of poetry, co-published by Southern Illinois University Press and Crab Orchard Review, searches for the miraculous in the seemingly ordinary, fashioning art out of artless objects. The poems, which date back to 1996, explore such everyday subjects as yawns and pears, cockroaches and crows. They examine the inner life of cows, speculate about Cleopatra’s lingerie and note the strangeness of hands that hide themselves in pockets, grip the gun that shot Lincoln or balance a cigarette between two fingers.

A recipient of the Thayer Fellowship in the Arts from the State University of New York (SUNY), Davidson started teaching at UWG in fall 2003. He teaches courses in 20th-century poetry and world literature and a creative writing workshop. He previously taught at Binghamton University–SUNY, where he also earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree this year.

Poetry is a passion of Davidson’s, and he hopes that as he teaches his students his love of it, they will add to his understanding of the art. He says he hopes his poetry will also have an artistic influence on his students.

“I know that, for me, reading my professors’ books and having the opportunity to speak with them about their own poems meant a great deal to me and still does,” he explained. “Learning the art of poetry has always been more of an apprenticeship. We learn it by studying poets and emulating – and rebelling against – them.”

Davidson is currently shaping a new collection of poems, which he hopes will have more thematic unity.

“First books so often represent a poet in a time of tremendous growth and, thus, are usually varied in their approaches and subjects,” he said. “The second book is, for me, a time to slow down and concentrate more consciously on what I want to achieve.”

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