At Knox College, poet Donald Revell discovered a community of creators with a difference—an unexpected level of respect for each other's individual backgrounds and experiences. With Donald Revell on campus, Knox College students experienced a critic who could engage each writer at the creative place where their poetry was taking shape. 

Revell, author of 17 collections of poetry and six volumes of translations from French, was the inaugural Robin Metz Writer in Residence. The residency was established in honor of the late Robin Metz, founder of Knox’s creative writing program and faculty member for a half-century, and is supported by the Robin Metz Endowed Fund for the Creative Arts, established by Robin and Elizabeth Carlin Metz in honor of Robin’s years of teaching creative writing at Knox.

At Knox from May 1-2, 2025, Revell met with students individually, for a dinner, and in a masterclass for the Poetry Workshop. He also read from his own works at the monthly Caxton Club and adjudicated two poetry competitions: the Davenport Poetry Prize and the Audrey Collet-Conard Prize in Poetry. 

In the Davenport Poetry prizes, Revell awarded honorable mentions to Marli Messner ’25 and Daisy Buchanan ’25, third place to Natalie O'Brien ’25, second place to Jude Reed ’25 and first place to Danielle Miron ’25. The Audrey Collet-Conard Prize in Poetry was awarded to McKennzie Boyd ’28. Each prize announcement was a short poem in itself. Of Miron's work, Revell said, "These are graceful interweavings of perception with thought, vivid details passing in and out of abstraction, acquiring the substance of truth."

While the Muelder Reading Room was full for his Caxton Club reading, Revell acknowledged a truth—poetry is not top of mind in popular culture. "We all care about poetry, which means we're on the outside; poetry has very few [material] compensations." 

“Knox is one of the places that takes poetry seriously,” said Natalie O'Brien, one of the Davenport awardees. "The people who care about poetry at Knox, they care about it so much." O'Brien has served for three years as poetry editor of Catch. "I really care about the poetry scene on campus, about students being able to share work with each other and get feedback from each other."

Now retired and living in upstate New York, Revell has taught at flagship universities in Tennessee, Missouri, Iowa, Alabama, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada. About his time at Knox, Revell said, "Something is in the atmosphere at this place, and I suspect it's healthy. It lets people be themselves without feeling that they're being themselves in spite of, or in competition with, or in reaction to anyone. I'm really delighted. The word diversity is uselessly abused, but it seemed to me that all the students I met were incredibly varied, and also incredibly comfortable with the variety. Something is going on in the English department, or the arts, or maybe the whole school. I'm impressed. I've never felt so comfortable. This place could give tolerance a good name."

One literary critic described Revell as a "startlingly difficult but intensely lyrical devotional poet, a full-blown Christian visionary." O'Brien found him "an exceedingly generous man... so willing to give me feedback. He asked me questions I didn't have answers for, which is exciting. I'd used 'you' in one of my poems, and he asked me, 'Who's "you"?' It gave me pause, and I gave a basic answer, 'I suppose it's the reader.' Then he said, 'But who is your reader? What is your relationship to the reader?' It wasn't something I had considered, and I thought, 'That's a really good question.'"

O'Brien said she entered the competition for the chance that Revell would critique her work. "I've never submitted to the Davenport before. I didn't care about winning an award for my writing. I was very excited to hear that he was coming, and if there was an opportunity to talk to him about my poems, that would be invaluable."

Revell was brought to campus by Nicolas Regiacorte, professor of English and director of the program in creative writing.

“Bringing writers to campus is among the best ways to refresh how we think of the craft of writing itself and the role of literature in the world,” Regiacorte said. “Robin Metz always sought to renew our sense of why writing matters. If you track the history of writers who have been to Knox, from Etheridge Knight to Jorie Graham, Marilynne Robinson, Carl Phillips, and many more, what better way than endowing a residency for the Knox community to experience how these writers adhere to a tradition, but also necessarily break with it? Residencies are essential to any art, I'd wager, vital to students and faculty alike.”

The Davenport Literary Awards in fiction, nonfiction, playwriting, and poetry were established by John Davenport, who taught English at Knox from 1945 to 1972, in memory of his parents, A. Eugene and Ella Stewart Davenport.

The Collet-Conard Prize, given in recognition of aesthetic excellence and spiritual resonance in a student's poetry, was established by Jo Ann Robinson '64, in memory of Audrey Collet-Conard '65.