Davidson Garrett is a native of Shreveport, Louisiana. He trained for the theater at The American Academy of Dramatic Arts and graduated from The City College of New York with an M.S. in Education. A member of Screen Actor’s Guild/AFTRA and Actors’ Equity, he has worked in theater, film and television since 1973. His poetry, fiction and articles have been published in The New York Times, The Episcopal New Yorker, Xavier Review (New Orleans), Sensations Magazine, Third Wednesday, Marco Polo Arts Mag, Big City Lit, the website of The Beat Museum in San Francisco and in Podium, the online literary journal of the 92^nd Street Y.  In 2000, his chapbook manuscript, Taxi Dreams, was a finalist in the Gival Press Chapbook Competition.  In 2006, that manuscript evolved into his first collection of poetry and prose, King Lear of the Taxi (Advent Purple Press). Two of the poems from his book were the subject of a short film, Taxi Driver, produced by Flashgun Films of Great Britain. The film was screened at the Portobello Film Festival in London in 2008. In 2011, Davidson was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for his work in the anthology Pears, Prose and Poetry, published by Poets Wear Prada.  He was profiled in New York Magazine in July 2012, in an article about taxi drivers who moonlight in other professions. In August 2012, Davidso premiered his one-man show, King Lear of the Taxi: A Poetic Monologue, for the Boog City Art and Music Festival in Manhattan’s East Village.  In May 2013, Davidson was invited to read his postry at Joe’s Pub, presented by the PEN World Voices Festival as part of the Taxi Driver Writers’ Workshop.  Davidson has been a New York City taxi driver, full time and part time, for over 35 years to help subsidize his art.

JOHN J. TRAUSE, said to be the secret love child of Henri Langlois and Mary  Meerson (Or is it Marie Menken and Willard Maas?), is  the Director of Oradell Public Library and the author of Eye Candy for Andy: 13 Most Beautiful… Poems for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests; Inside Out, Upside Down, and Round and Round; Seriously Serial; and Latter-Day Litany, the latter staged Off-Off Broadway.  His translations, poetry, and visual work appear internationally in many journals and anthologies, including the artists’ periodical Crossings, the Dada journal Maintenant, the journal Offerta Speciale, the Uphook Press anthologies Hell Strung and Crooked and -gape-seed-, and the Great Weather for Media anthology It’s Animal but Merciful.  He has shared the stage with Steven Van Zandt, Anne Waldman, Karen Finley, and Jerome Rothenberg, the page with Lita Hornick, William Carlos Williams, Woody Allen, Ted Kooser, and Pope John Paul II, and the cage with the Cumaean Sibyl, Ezra Pound, Hannibal Lector, Andrei Chikatilo, and George “The Animal” Steele.  He is a founder of the William Carlos Williams Poetry Cooperative in Rutherford, NJ, and the former host and curator of its monthly reading series.  He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize (2009 – 2011).  For the sake of art Mr. Trause hung naked for one whole month in the summer of 2007 on the Art Wall of the Bowery Poetry Club.

Praise for John J. Trause’s EYE CANDY FOR ANDY: 13 Most Beautiful… Poems for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests

* Aphorisms… Minimalisms… Trauseisms… More fun with Andy

Taylor Mead, writer, actor, performer, poet, and one of Andy Warhol’s Superstars

* Brief as the lives on display, these utterly charming pieces resonate with eroticism, sentiment, devilish humor and unexpected editorial comment… fitting testament to one of the key moving image projects of the 20^th Century.

Ron Magliozzi, Associate Curator, Department of Film, Museum of Modern Art, New York

* sighting by Billy.  i see the poem, read it, and find it charming, one of the 13 most beautiful…..

Billy Name, photographer, filmmaker, lighting designer, Warhol Factory Archivist