“Only when my work is pure as love will my labor cause church steeples to bow and redwoods to burn,” says De Anza student Josh Davis in an excerpt from his self-published poetry book, “Adulthoods.”
Davis, who goes by the pseudonym Bambi, describes his work as his main priority.
“I’m writing all the time. I carry a notebook around with me,” Davis said.
Davis is a 19-year-old painting major who started writing poetry for the book at the age of 13. Most of the content for “Adulthoods” was produced within the past year.
“I was just writing to write,” he said. “I felt like I needed to do something.”
Inspired by the non-materialistic hardcore punk music and art culture in San Francisco, Davis began his journey on the “fringe.”
“I felt like a lot of the bands and art in San Francisco motivate me,” he said. “I wanted to be a part of that.”
Local San Francisco bands like Rank/Xerox musically reaffirm his views about the community, and that “poetry and all art is connecting your experience with someone else’s experience,” Davis said.
“I feel like everyone can relate to what I wrote,” he said.
Recently, Davis has begun reading more political literature and feels “it resets your standards for what being a good person means.”
Angst, unemployment, suburban living, boredom, poverty, not relating well to a material culture, being introduced to ideas that make everyday living hard, racism, and sexism are some of the specific political themes that play out in Davis’s “Adulthoods.”
“Whitemother,” a political poem, was inspired by talking to a friend’s mother about the riots following the Oscar Grant Bay Area Rapid Transit shooting in 2009.
“It’s about people in places of privilege [and] how they don’t see the big picture,” Davis said.
“I’m trying to make ‘Adulthoods’ more personal and political, instead of a manifesto,” he said.
One of Davis’s biggest influences is Jeffrey Brown, who wrote “Clumsy Love story,” “I Want to be Small,” and “Funny Misshapen Body”.
“Adulthoods” is a collection of what Davis describes as “strange love poems.” The language is “painfully straightforward,” and almost abstract. His work is often about people who don’t realize it’s about them.
Davis hopes that readers can find community in his work that he has found with the music and art scene in San Francisco.
“I want the point of the book to make people reassess everything from the ground up,” Davis said. “I hope people can relate to it, and not feel so … insane.”
Despite all of this, the book was hard to show to the public.
It’s super personal,” Davis said. “It says things that people don’t want to hear, but should.”
Support from his family and friends helped him to publish the book. He used the money he got when he turned 19.
“Adulthoods” was published on Lulu.com and is sold at Thrillhouse Records in San Francisco and Quimby’s in Chicago.
