Dave Holt

After high school, Dave Holt began putting poems to music. He moved to California to become a songwriter and played with several music acts in the Bay Area; he wrote music for theater. Later, following the muse of story telling and poetry, he completed San Francisco State University’s Creative Writing program (B.A. ‘93, and M.A. 1995). His poems are published in Tiger’s Eye, Pedestal Magazine, Spillway Magazine, Bay Area Poets Seasonal Review, Crazy Child Scribbler, and other journals. He was a winner in the Thomas Merton Foundation’s Poetry of the Sacred contest, and the 2011 Maggie Meyer Memorial Contest; he was featured in the 9th Annual Berkeley Poetry Festival in 2011. Though mainly of English/Irish ancestry, he is also descended from a great story telling family, the Debassiges of West Bay First Nation Ojibwe (O-jib-way), notable on Manitoulin Island, Ontario, for preserving the history of their Ojibwe leaders, elders, and warriors for over 300 years. His book, Voyages to Ancestral Islands, tells the story.