In a city full of talented artists, one won’t have to look far to find a myriad of creatives waiting to capture the perfect moment on 35mm film or recite thought-provoking poetry. Home to some of history’s greatest artists both world-renowned and award-winning like Billie Holiday and Questlove; Philadelphia also fosters greats in the making, like for instance, Kai Davis.
The local poet, writer, content creator, artist and all-around cool girl is taking Philadelphia by storm. Through vulnerability and care, Kai is exhibiting herself unapologetically and reshaping what it means to be an artist. Whether by painting, sound or poetry, Kai is one you can’t put into a box.
Raised in Germantown, Philadelphia, Kai found writing the way many young kids do—through English class and a good book.
“I started taking chunks out of my day to write, beginning around fifth grade. It was this weird fantasy and thriller stuff for some reason. Then my attention span went left, and I went to poetry,” Kai told THE BLOCK.
Finding love and a voice in writing, Davis admits her awakening began after seeing spoken word poets for the first time as a child.
“There was a poetry festival in my neighborhood that was organized by Yolanda Wisher, my father and some other people from Germantown Friends School. They brought all these spoken word poets and I was like, ‘Oh, I want to do that. That’s what I want to do.’ I was just obsessed after that,” Kai recalled.
True to her word, the poet would go on to attend Temple University where she’d perform with Babel, a collective of poets and artists who perform at spoken word events all over the country. During her time with Babel, Kai was twice named Grand Slam Champion, the Brave New Voices winner of 2011 and in 2016, won the College Union Poetry Slam Invitational. Since graduating, Kai’s only continued to stretch her literary legs.
As a poetry editor for the literary magazine Apiary, member of the Philadelphia Poet Laureate Committee and an active co-host and art director for the performance poetry organization The Philly Pigeon, Kai has surrounded herself in words both written and spoken. While it may seem like the perfect dream, doing exactly what you love and finding sustainability from it, burnout still manages to come for us all.
“I started performing professionally when I was in high school. So I was kind of working as a part-time student, part-time freelancer,” Kai said.
Woking since teenagedom, Kai knows firsthand about the pressures and pit traps of forced production.
“The feeling that I have to produce in order to be legitimate in general is definitely something I experienced. Just producing and feeling the need to be productive because of the capitalist society. … And it only stops being a thing when I take the time to remember what I like about art.
“I went through a mini-meltdown a few months ago when I realized that poetry wasn’t really occupying as much of my mind as all these other art forms that I was interested in exploring. And I was just like, ‘Okay, how do I have time to do this?’” Kai told us.
After some self-reflection, Kai came to her own realization about how to keep from going back to that negative place.
“I’ve just been doing what I love passionately and inviting people in. That’s actually been a lot more fruitful in different ways than the way I was doing things before, which was just ‘make the content, make the content.’”
Kai credits her community for keeping her engaged with the creative world.
“I was in a community of people who were constantly inspiring me and who I was making art with. They gave me a reason to keep doing it until I could gather that excitement and energy I had lost from working since I was a teenager,” Kai said.
So what has Kai been passionately loving now? If you check her Instagram, you might see it’s her community, her environment around Philadelphia, it may even be a painting of her backside done at 4 a.m. For Kai, the fun in finding what she loves comes from exploration.
“I’ve just been obsessed with sounds and color,” she said, sharing her latest interest.
The poet and artist is also excited by the abandonment of the genre. Eager to see lines blurred, Kai is enthusiastic about the future of art when not labeled and confined.
“The thing that’s most exciting that I’ve been noticing is this shift toward the genre. Everybody’s realizing we only have so much time on Earth, is it really necessary for there to be rigid rules about poems? Or about dancing or music? Can’t we just f*ck around and see what happens? That’s what’s most exciting,” Kai explained. “I really needed permission to do that, and I didn’t realize that I needed that.”
I create and perform for the people that I’m in community with, the people that show up to these poetry shows or that I run into at the grocery store, Or I went to school with.
Those are the people that I feel like I make art for. those are the people that can hold me accountable. … I think about my loved ones and the people that they love and try to do right by my ni**as.
Kai Davis
As a Black, queer poet and artist, Kai is creating space, holding it open for herself and bringing all of her interest into it. When it comes to genre-defying work, Kai has already begun her experimentation; she’s just waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.
