Meet Bay Davis | Poet, Model, Culture Curator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Bay Davis and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Bay, how do you think about risk?
Risk taking is threaded through most parts of not only my work/career and artistry but existence. I fell into modeling, culture curation, and poetry after my work in abolition and general political education. So many intersections of my identity and life have been met with “that’s not possible” or “not anything that makes money” I’ve been told that liberation work or poetry is not real work or even my existence as a black trans woman is incorrect.

All to say, at every point and turn I’ve been met with hurdles and circumstances against my favor and every single time I’ve had to take the risk of affirming myself that circumstance is not finite

I was raised in South Central by folks deeply impacted by the war on drugs, prison industrial complex, and really all of the other isms you can think of
everting about my “alternative” career or life choices has been risk

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
My work, and my art is an innate extension of myself, which is to say it is an extension of my resistance
Everything I do is an offering of the tools I’ve used in my own survival, in my organizing, in my own liberation. I’ve always said that one of my jobs as a poet specifically is to offer as much of my truth as possible, and hopes that other folks are able to identify themselves in it also, if I can reach somebody that doesn’t belong to any of the intersections of my identity with a poem I’ve won we’ve won
I realized early on that I could connect to someone in a poem, and a way that I maybe could not from a podium or from a rally or in a meeting
I’ve spent my whole life challenging what is possible, and what we know to be circumstance.

Because my work is so directly connected to not only my own healing, but the labor that comes with communal liberation almost none of it has been easy. I deeply believe that I have been able to get to where I am today because of community. I’ve been held, picked up, challenged, held accountable, taught, mourned, celebrated, and been raised by community. The fundamentals that have been poured into me, have become the pillars and blueprints that inform not only my work, but my life choices as well. I attribute whatever success I’ve been blessed with to these pillars.

I want the world to know that I am deeply committed to the work to community to us to our freedom. I want the world to know that I have survived rooms, where it’s really hard to find God, and every poem is an escape route with highlighted instructions.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
If my best friend was visiting from out of town and coming to my neighborhood, I would take them to Dino’s for the best chicken in their life. We would walk around Echo Park
We would get cute oil and incense in leimert park
We would dance at Hood rave and quiet night at tea at Shiloh
We would rollerskate at Moonlight roller rink
We would go buy little hoochie outfits at the Santee Alley

Wed watch two Dollar movies in Pasadena
Wed flirt with the guy two tables over from us at Bacari
And we’d all go get drinks at Apt. 200

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I am anything I am because of all the women that have had a hand in raising me

Thankyou and blessings to

My mom, Dora Melendez
Lynette McElhaney
Patrisse Cullors
Carla Gonzalez
My 9th grade history teacher Mrs.Briggs
Kat Magil
Kamile Oshundara’s mom Lisa
Reina
My tia Shantay
The women of DPL
And my Grandmas Esperanza Hilda Pallacios and Elsie Davis

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/baydavis/?hl=en

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bbk6zL91DMs