King Lear of the Taxi: Musings of a New York City Actor/Taxi Driver; Arias of a Rhapsodic Spirit
Davidson Garrett (born September 11, 1952), also known as "King Lear of the Taxi",[1] is an American poet and actor living in New York City, New York. He drove a New York City yellow taxicab from 1978 until 2018 to supplement his acting and writing career. He has authored six books of poetry, and has been published in many literary magazines, and poetry journals.[2]
Garrett also toured in theater extensively in the United States and in Europe, performing for the United Service Organizations. In 2017, his spoken word play, Conspiracy Theory: The Mysterious Death of Dorothy Kilgallen, was performed for the Boog City Poets Theater.[2]
Early life
Garrett was born September 11, 1952, in Shreveport, Louisiana, the son of Fred Davidson Garrett, a hardware salesman, and Viola Brown Garrett, a florist.
Garrett lived at the McBurney YMCA in the Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea from 1978 until 2000. This was the YMCA on which the Village People based their pop song anthem, "Y.M.C.A."[5][6]
Poetry
Garrett's poems and other writings have appeared in The New York Times,[7]Xavier Review from New Orleans, Big City Lit, 2 Bridges Review from City University of New York, The Paddock Review, Sensations Magazine, Nerve Lantern, Impossible Archetype, First Literary Review-East, The Paterson Literary Review, Reverie Magazine,[8]The Ekphrastic Review,[9]The Stillwater Review, The Episcopal New Yorker,[10]Marco Polo Arts Magazine,[11]Conceit Magazine, Thorny Locust, and Podium,[12] the online literary journal of the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center. His poetry has been anthologized in several anthologies, including The Arcade of the Scribes (Rogue Scholars Press, 2023), Stonewall’s Legacy (Local Gems Press 2019), From Somewhere To Nowhere: The End of the “American Dream (Autonomedia, 2017), Beyond the Rift: Poets of the Palisades (The Poets Press, 2010), and Pears, Prose and Poetry (Poets Wear Prada / Eggplant Press, 2011).[13]
Garrett has authored six books of poetry, the most recent of which is Cabaletta: Poems of a New York City Taxi Driver, published in 2022 by Finishing Line Press. Arias of a Rhapsodic Spirit, a full-length collection, was released in 2020 by Kelsay Books, and two chapbooks, What Happened to the Man Who Taught Me Beowulf? and Other Poems, released in 2017, and Southern Low Protestant Departure: A Funeral Poem, released in 2015. An earlier chapbook, To Tell The Truth I Wanted To Be Kitty Carlisle and Other Poems, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2013.
Garrett's first full-length collection, King Lear of the Taxi: Musings of a New York City Actor/Taxi Driver, was published in 2006 by Advent Purple Press.[14]
In 2013, Garrett was invited to take part in a taxi drivers' writing workshop organized by the poet Mark Nowak and sponsored by the PEN World Voices Festival.[15][16] He and two other members of the workshop, Seth Goldman and John McDonagh, read their taxi poems at "Watching the Meter: Poetry from the Taxi Drivers Workshop" at The Public Theater's Joe's Pub in New York City. The New York Times reviewed this event, dubbing the three taxi drivers "The Bards of Gridlock."[17]
In November 2017, Garrett's poem "A Taxi Driver's Die Gotterdammerung" was included in the poetry anthology From Somewhere to Nowhere: The End of the American Dream, published by Autonomedia, a nationally known publisher of radical books. The poem documents Garrett's actual experience when his yellow taxi was parked under the North Tower of the World Trade Center at the moment the first plane hit the tower on September 11, 2001.[18]
On May 1, 2023, Garrett was invited along with other members of the PEN Worker Writers School to celebrate International Workers' Day in a reading of cinquains in Brooklyn Bridge Park sponsored by the Dia Art Foundation. As each cinquain was read, its text was projected on the stanchion of the Brooklyn Bridge. This was the first time in the history of the Brooklyn Bridge that poetry was projected onto it.[19]
Spoken word, performance
Garrett has perfored spoken word plays, poetry, and more, primarily in the New York City region.
In the autumn of 2005, Garrett's satirical verse play The Tragedy of MacCheney premiered in a staged reading at Grover Cleveland Birthplace in Caldwell, New Jersey, with Garrett performing all the characters in front of the fireplace in the historic living room. The event, which featured poets reflecting on the U.S. presidential election of 2004, was part of Sensations Magazine's Creative Events Series.[2]
In December 2008, at the Robinson Plantation House, a historic home in Clark, New Jersey built in 1690, Garrett performed all of Shakespeare's King Lear monologues in a program titled "The Poetry of Shakespeare's King Lear." The event was sponsored by Sensations Magazine.[20]
Garrett was cast in the play Ishtar Redux by poet John J. Trause, which was staged in 2013 at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in an evening of performance works produced by the performance artist journal Nerve Lantern.[22]
In August 2015, Garrett was invited to the Boog City Poets' Theatre in the East Village, Manhattan, to perform a new poetic monologue with incidental music, titled "Nine Meditations on the Nothingness of Now."[23] He collaborated with musician Michael Skliar.
Flushing Town Hall, a cultural arts organization in the Borough of Queens, invited Garrett to give a solo outdoor poetry reading in Diversity Plaza[24] in June 2016, as part of a cultural program celebrating LGBTQ Pride Month in Jackson Heights.
In January 2017, Garrett was invited to read his original poems about the 1960s in a series of four spoken word shows at Cornelia Street Cafe, titled "What Were The Sixties Really Like?", which were produced and curated by poet and playwright Kathyn Adisman.[26]
In 2017, Garrett's spoken word play Conspiracy Theory: The Mysterious Death of Dorothy Kilgallen was performed at the Boog City Poets' Theater Festival, curated by poet Joel Allegretti. The play was published in Issue 8 of the performance art journal Nerve Lantern.
In December 2020, 2021, and 2022, Garrett was invited by the Church of the Transfiguration, Episcopal (Manhattan), also known as the Little Church Around the Corner, to give special poetry readings commemorating World AIDS Day.[27]
Awards and honors
Garrett's manuscript Taxi Dreams was a finalist in the 2000 Gival Press chapbook competition. That chapbook evolved into his first poetry collection, King Lear of the Taxi.
In 2009, Garrett was featured in an entire chapter about an incident with streetwalkers and an angry john who destroyed his taxi in Amy Braunschweiger's book Taxi Confidential: Life, Death and 3 a.m.: Revelations in New York City Cabs.[28]
Garrett's poem about HIV/AIDS, "Death in Harlem Hospital with Straussian Overtones: 1986," received Honorable Mention in December 2007, for Poet of the Month, by the Foundation For Creative Expression in San Francisco, and was published on the website of that city's Beat Museum.[2]
Garrett was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2011. In 2012, he was featured in New York magazine in the article "I Drive A Taxi But I Also…" by award-winning journalist Kate Lowenstein.[29]
In June 2014, Garrett was awarded first place in the second annual Juanita Torrence-Thompson International Poetry Competition, sponsored by Amulet Poetry Magazine.
In August 2016 and September 2018, Garrett was the curator for Poets' Theater at the Annual Boog City Music, Poetry and Theater Festival, presenting eight short plays both years at the legendary SideWalk Cafe in the East Village, Manhattan. For 2016's program, he presented excerpts from poet Zhang Er's opera libretto Tacoma Method.[30]
On September 30, 2018, Garrett was invited to be the poetry curator of "An Afternoon of Poetry in Albert's Garden," a half-century-old community garden near the Bowery. For this reading, Garrett invited poets Jeffrey Cyphers Wright, John J. Trause, Hilary Sideris, Austin Alexis, and Jessica Nooney to read from their recently published works. Garrett served as MC for the special event held in the Shade Garden, and he ended the reading with his recently published poem, "Texas Wildflowers in Spring: In Memory of Lady Bird Johnson."[31]
Filmography
In 2025, Garrett was interviewed by the American LGBTQ+ Museum for its oral history "Queer Legacies Project", which was filmed in the library of the Edith Windsor Room at SAGE in New York City. His interview appears in Episode 4 of the "Queer Legacies Project Series", available on YouTube.[2]
In 2019, Garrett was the subject of the short film "The Taxi Cab Poet: Davidson Garrett" by filmmaker Zardon Richardson. The film was screened at a program at the Jerome L. Greene Performance Space at WNYC Radio, as a part of the PEN World Voices Festival. Also featured in the same program was former poet laureate Sonia Sanchez.[2]
In September 2008, texts from Garrett's book King Lear of the Taxi were used for the short film "Taxi Driver," screened at the Portobello Film Festival in London, U.K. by director Ray Andrew Wilkes, with Garrett recording the voice-over for the film.[32]
In 1993, Garrett was featured in the award-winning documentary Something Within Me, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won the Audience Award Documentary. The documentary profiled St. Augustine School of the Arts in the South Bronx, where Garrett taught arts education for several years. Later, the film was broadcast on PBS and shown on Public Broadcasting stations throughout the United States.[2]
Publications
Garrett, Davidson (2022). Cabaletta: Poems of a New York City Taxi Driver. Georgetown, Kentucky: Finishing Line Press. ISBN978-1646627271.
Garrett, Davidson (2020). Arias of a Rhapsodic Spirit. American Fork, Utah: Kelsay Books. ISBN978-1952326271.
Garrett, Davidson (2017). What Happened to The Man Who Taught Me Beowulf? and Other Poems. New York City, New York: Advent Purple Press. ISBN978-0977444625.
Garrett, Davidson (2015). Southern Low Protestant Departure: A Funeral Poem. New York City, New York: Advent Purple Press. ISBN978-0977444618.
Garrett, Davidson (2014). King Lear of the Taxi: Musings of a New York City Actor/Taxi Driver (3rd printing). New York City, New York: Advent Purple Press. ISBN978-0977444601.
Garrett, Davidson (2013). To Tell The Truth I Wanted To Be Kitty Carlisle and Other Poems. Georgetown, Kentucky: Finishing Line Press. ISBN978-1622292790.
1 2 "David Garrett". Poets and Writers. November 13, 2018. Archived from the original on April 22, 2019. Retrieved May 17, 2023.
↑ Lyons, Jessica (2007). "Taxi driver writes between fares". Taxi-Mart News. Archived from the original on May 8, 2014. Retrieved December 12, 2019. Originally from Louisiana, Garrett came to New York in 1972 in part because he felt he could not be open about his homosexuality in his hometown and also in order to pursue acting.
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