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Cortney Davis

Cortney Davis(born 1945) is an American poet, essayist and Nurse Practitioner.

Biography

Cortney Davis was born in Easton, Maryland in 1945. She received a BA in English with a minor in creative writing from Western CT State University, Magna Cum Laude, in 1983, and a MA in English from Western CT State University in 1989. She studied for two semesters at New York University with Sharon Olds, Carolyn Forche, Galway Kinnell and Yehuda Amichai. She has studied privately with Dick Allen, Thomas Lux, and Honor Moore.

She received an Associate’s Degree in Nursing from Norwalk Community College (with high honors) in 1972, and after working for several years as a charge nurse in Intensive Care, returned to school and graduated from Cornell University-New York Hospital School of Nursing as Nurse Practitioner in 1978.

Cortney worked in subspecialty and family practices and for 16 years specialized in women’s health at Danbury Hospital in Danbury, CT.

As a writer, Cortney views her subject material through the lens of her experiences in healthcare: “Eventually, nursing and poetry merge: a perfect place in which the act of caring becomes a way of keeping, and the mysteries of our world are revealed in the sensual reality of physical detail.” As a nurse-writer, she is active in the literature and medicine field and co-editor of the first anthology of creative writing by nurses, “Between the Heartbeats: Poetry and Prose by Nurses” (University of Iowa Press, 1995).

She is the poetry editor of the journal “Alimentum: the literature of food”

Books

Adastra Press, MA. Publisher Gary Metras. The Body Flute (Chapbook) December 1994 ISBN # 0-938566-66-0

University of Iowa Press, Iowa. Between the Heartbeats: Poetry and Prose by Nurses. Edited by Cortney Davis and Judy Schaefer November 1995  ISBN # 0-87745-516-3 (cloth)  0-87745-517-1 (paper)

CALYX Books, Oregon. Details of Flesh. June 29, 1997 ISBN 0-934971-58-7 (cloth)
 * 1) 0-934971-57-9 (paper)

Small Poetry Press, CA. Willy-Nilly Poems for Children  (chapbook) 2000

Random House, New York. I Knew a Woman: the Experience of the Female Body. August, 2001 ISBN # 0-375-50418-4 (cloth)

Ballantine Books, New York. I Knew a Woman: Four Women Patients and Their Female Caregiver. July, 2002  ISBN #0-345-43874-4 (paper)

University of Iowa Press, Iowa. Intensive Care: More Poetry and Prose by Nurses. Edited by Cortney Davis and Judy Schaefer. May 2003 ISBN 0-87745-838-3 (paper)

University of Nebraska Press, Nebraska. Leopold’s Maneuvers. September, 2004 ISBN 0-8032-1729-3 (cloth)  0-8032-6643-X (paper)

Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio. The Heart’s Truth: Essays on the Art of Nursing. January, 2009 ISBN 978-1-60635-003-4 (paper)

Finishing Line Press, Georgetown, Kentucky. Conversion / Return. September, 2009 ISBN 1-59924-482-9 (paper)  ISBN 178-1-59924-482-2

Book Chapters

“Nurses’ Poetry: Expanding the Literature and Medicine Canon” in Teaching Literature and Medicine  Edited by Anne Hunsaker Hawkins and Marilyn Chandler McEntyre. Modern Language Association: New York (2000) ISBN # 0-87352-356-3 (cloth) 0-87352-357-1 (paper)

“Body Teaching” in The Teacher’s Body: Embodiment, Authority, and Identity in the Academy  Edited by Diane P. Freedman and Martha Stoddard Holmes. State Univ. of New York Press: New York (2003)  ISBN # 0-7914-5765-6 (cloth)  0-7914-5766-4 (paper)

“Cortney Davis: Blue Lace Socks by Jeanne Bryner;  The Arduous Touch edited by Amy Haddad and Kate Brown;  Between the Heartbeats edited by Cortney Davis and Judy Schaefer;  Blood & Bone edited by Angeli Belli and Jack Coulehan;  What the Nurse Likes by Cortney Davis” in Editors’ Choices from the Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database  Edited by Felice Aull. New York University School of Medicine: New York (2003) ISBN# 0-9651593-4-5

“Nurse Practitioner and Writer: The Best of Both Worlds” in Nurse Entrepreneurs:  Tales of Nurses in Business  edited by Patricia Ann Bemis. National Nurses in Business Association, Inc.: Rockledge, FL (2004). ISBN# 0-9678112-3-6

Poems and commentary: “The Nurse’s Pockets,” “Heroics,” “The Good Nurse,” “Everything in Life Is Divided,” “How I’m Able To Love” in The Poetry of Nursing: Poems and Commentaries of Leading Nurse-Poets Edited by Judy Schaefer. The Kent State University Press: Kent, Ohio (2006) ISBN-13: 978-0-87338-848-1; ISBN-10: 0-87338-848-8

“Where Did It Go?” in Untwinning: perspectives on the death of a twin before birth Edited by Althea Hayton. Wren Publications: St. Albans, U.K. (2007) ISBN 0-9525654-9-8

“Becoming Flora: When the Narrative is Our Own” in Stories of Illness and Healing: Women Write their Bodies Edited by S. DasGupta and M. Hurst, Kent State University Press, 2007. ISBN# 978-0-87338-916-7

“Chasing Fire Engines” in Return to the House of God: Medical Resident Education 1978-2008 Edited by Martin Kohn and Carol Donley, Kent State University Press, 2008. ISBN# 978-0-87338-983-9

“Cortney Davis” (an interview with Lura Penthel) in Developing Clinicians’ Career Pathways in Narrative and Relationship-Centered Care: Footprints of Clinician Pioneers Edited by John Engel, Lura Penthel, Joseph Zarconi, Radcliffe Publishers, 2011, ISBN #13: 978 184619 5730

Awards

1990, 1994, 2005 Poetry Grants from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts

1991 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award in Poetry, Judah Magnes Museum, CA

1994 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry

2002 Connecticut Center for the Book Award in Non-Fiction for “I Knew a Woman”

2003 Prairie Schooner Poetry Prize for “Leopold’s Maneuvers” 2004 American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award for “Intensive Care: More Poetry and Prose by Nurses” (co-editor)

2005 American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award for “Leopold’s Maneuvers”

2007 Recipient of a “Nightingale Award” for excellence in nursing

2010 American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award for “The Heart’s Truth: Essays on the Art of Nursing”

2010 Independent Publishers Silver Medal in the category Essays/Creative Non-Fiction for “The Heart’s Truth: Essays on the Art of Nursing”

Critique

Reviewer Doug Marx writes, “For Davis, there’s no split between what Yeats called the ‘life’ and the ‘work.’ Her profession provides an emotional and metaphorical framework for her art. There’s a compassionate matter-of-factness in these frequently graphic poems, and that tone is, in many ways, the book’s real success. Davis avoids the dangers inherent in this kind of material: voyeurism, self-martyrdom, New Age sentiment. Somewhat surprisingly, these poems are fairly free of black humor, a not uncommon characteristic among those who witness a lot of suffering. Instead, Davis brings to her experience an awareness of human sexuality that is almost revelatory in this seemingly asexual context. A kind of liberation is generated by such honesty, something a thousand hours of ‘ER’ or “Chicago Hope’ could never induce.” “A practicing nurse, Davis creates indelibly vivid portraits of patients and healers. Her poetry gleams with clear-eyed compassion, the unflinching courage to confront the suffering that few of us are willing to face, offering us a new vocabulary for agony and tenderness, mortality and transcendence of mortality.” —Martín Espada “Davis’s work transcends all adjectives, locating itself in the complexity and mystery of human existence. [Her] poems bypass poetic trends and leap directly into the hard facts of birth, sex, and death.” —Jeffrey Skinner “Davis unerringly and courageously addresses our suffering, and offers us the joyous possibility of healing.” —Rafael Campo “Cortney Davis has an uncanny ability to give voice to the profound act of everyday nursing and its power in transforming people's lives. Somehow, she sees the shadows and ghosts that fill our bodies and souls and makes sense of them, showing us that the divide between patient and provider is an artificial one that can get in the way of true understanding, reminding us of the power of reflection and narrative, and challenges us to reclaim these ways of knowing in the interest of healing our patients—and ourselves." —Diana Mason, PhD, C, FAAN, RN, Rudin Professor of Nursing, Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing

References

NEED TO ADD 2007 Nightingale Award: CT Nursing News, Vol. 80, Issue 2, June, July, August 2007, page 9 External links Website: www.cortneydavis.com Poetry on line:

"Teaching CPR" "Terrorism: Call & Response" "When We Lived on the Third Floor," "Onset Beach, Cape Cod, September 24," "Lucid Dreaming" "Film Noir" "Lament," "First Night at the Cheap Hotel" “Cradle Dreams” (podcast) http://superstitionreview.asu.edu/blog/?s=cortney+davis Articles: "Mothers Who Write" "A Way to Honor Life" "Praise for the April Poems, the April Poets" Interviews: The Diane Rehm Show (Audio) NurseWeek "Medicine, Nursing and Literary Writing": Reach MD Radio Works Annotated by Cortney Davis NYU's Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database