John Davis Jr. is a native Floridian who grew up on a citrus farm. His poetry has appeared in dozens of literary journals internationally, with notable features in The Common online, Tampa Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Saw Palm, Nashville Review, and many others. He has garnered many awards for his writing over the years, including the 2021 Sidney Lanier Poetry Prize. He is also the author of four previous collections of poems. He holds an MFA and teaches English in the Tampa Bay Area.

Other poems by John Davis Jr. in Verse Daily:

Books by John Davis Jr.:

Other poems on the web by John Davis Jr.:
Two poems
Two poems
Three poems
Two poems
"The Farm I’ve Willed You"
"Family Gathering"
"Re: Sisters, 1945"

John Davis Jr.'s Website.

John Davis Jr. on Twitter.

About The Places That Hold:

"The Places That Hold braves to tackle some of the darkest memories of our shared Florida history, never gratuitously, always unflinching, and with an eye toward understanding how we are formed and influenced by them. I'm thankful there exists the kind of storytelling in these poems that cannot be shaken loose. You will be thankful, too, to have found this book and to have discovered a masterful storyteller living here among us in the scrub pines and estuaries."
—Michael Presley Bobbitt