Poet Davis shares stories of resilience, hope

Overview:

Summerville poet Will Davis, also known by his artist name Tethered Wrds, released his debut poetry collection, Threads of Resilience: weaving the human spirit through poetry, on Jan. 26.

Summerville poet Will Davis, also known by his artist name Tethered Wrds, released his debut poetry collection, Threads of Resilience: weaving the human spirit through poetry, on Jan. 26. The collection takes readers on Davis’ journey to the U.S.-Mexico border, where he spoke and lived with migrants and immigrants in an effort to understand and document their experiences.

Davis wrote the book over a three-year period, during which he took multiple trips to the U.S.-Mexico border. He had the opportunity to work with organizations like Practice Mercy Foundation in McAllen, Texas, which services women and children at the border, and BorderLinks in Tucson, Ariz. He also interacted with Border Patrol and people living in these communities.

“As soon as I hit the ground, I could not unsee what I saw,” he told the Charleston City Paper. “I couldn’t just regurgitate talking points. … These people were no longer strangers, but they were faces with names and stories. … I was actually able to stay there on the riverbanks, so that as best as I could, experience what they experienced, the anxiety and fears.

“I had to be able to echo their voices and stories in a different way because I knew they weren’t being told.”

Davis said his work as a Multilingual Parent Advocate for the Charleston County School District also inspired him while writing the book. In this role, he supports non-English-speaking families to help remove obstacles so students can more easily succeed in the classroom.

“I wanted to tell [these] stories as a person who helps others, who has a job helping others,” he said. “I realized if I were to do that with a book, and released my first book as a poet, it had to be one that would empower others, especially to speak into such a heavy topic.”

Taking the reader on a journey

The idea of framing the book as a journey was a deliberate choice. Davis said he hopes readers will set aside what they think they know about immigration to walk alongside him and the people he met on his travels.

“I think that’s the only way you create bonds. … You just know them a little better and then the fear is not there. So I just want to introduce you to these people.”

The book is split into two parts. In the first, Davis provides additional detail about each of the poems, including where it was written and his thoughts and feelings at the time of writing.

“I’m trying to soften the world of immigration that comes with a lot of angst or weight. … I wanted to give people an understanding as to where I was, but it also gives them a glimpse into my mind and how I processed and how I wrote what I was writing.”

In the second part of Threads of Resilience, readers can read and interpret the poems without Davis’ influence. The book features images, quotes and stories of the people Davis met along the way, putting faces to those impacted by immigration at the Southern border.

Connecting with faith

In many ways, the book is also a piece of Davis himself, who not only draws on his experiences in migrant communities, but also with his faith as a Christian.

“The Scriptures are always telling stories of a people on the move. Of a God on the move. There’s movement of people and love for a diverse people,” he said.

“I saw faith and immigration going hand-in-hand, and so I couldn’t get away from it, and I had to speak into it. This is me and my worlds colliding, literally at the border. I just want to show people where I came from and not shy away from it.”

While the stories he tells in Threads of Resilience may be harrowing and difficult, Davis sees his new collection as a way to both challenge the typical American narrative of immigration and reframe future conversations about immigration and its impact on the lives of migrants at the border.

Even the book’s design, which was a collaboration between Davis, his wife Sarah and designer Elizabeth Bell, speaks to what Davis views as the long-term impact of the collection. The orange cover represents hope and optimism and is juxtaposed against fully black pages in the book’s interior, which reflect the heaviness to the themes and stories.

“Immigration — the conversation, the word — carries so much weight in the American mind and heart,” Davis said. “[My wife and I] wanted a book that not only we can be proud of, but a book that honored the people whose stories we are sharing. … Ultimately, it’s a book about hope.”

Purchase Threads of Resilience on Davis’ website tetheredwrds.com for $32.99.