Marie Davidson on poetry book Traveler’s Faith and writing as medicine

I wasn’t really surprised when I heard that Montreal electronic artist Marie Davidson was publishing a poetry book. Her 2025 album, City Of Clowns (one of The FADER’s favorite albums of the year), was doubly remarkable for its propulsive electroclash production and Davidson’s blistering lyrics, focused on the absurdity of social media.

She’s now taken that same writerly sensibility and put it in a book, Traveler’s Faith, a collection of poems, out tomorrow, September 1, that details the tedium, insanity, and small moments of relief that define international air travel in our Kafkaesque age.

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Davidson is constantly on the road for tour, and began to write poems as a form of “anti-boredom” therapy. “I don't doomscroll anymore,” she said in a July video interview. “I write to process what is around me.”

There are some poems in the collection that are the exact lyrics of songs from City Of Clowns, like "Fun Times" and "Push Me Fuckhead," because Davidson doesn’t really see a difference between writing a song and a poem. Some are also lyrics to songs from a forthcoming project. “Anything I write can always turn into a poem or a song," she says.

The poems in Traveler's Faith are paired with evocative, liminal photos by Nadine Fraczkowski that show Davidson posing amid impersonal modern infrastructure, which feel like a parody of the bureaucratic slog of contemporary life.

Below, read an interview with Davidson about writing her debut poetry collection. You can read an excerpt of two poems from the book here.

The FADER: Can you tell me a little bit about your background with poetry and where it fits in with your music?

Marie Davidson: My mom was a poet when I was growing up. She eventually moved on to other disciplines, but she would organize a lot of poetry readings in Montreal. She was a single mom, so sometimes she just dragged me to poetry readings. I associated poetry when I was a kid with older people doing strange things in front of a mic.

When I was older, I got into music. I dropped out of school very young to play in bands. I never stepped foot in a university, but I was always a huge reader. I got back into writing poetry when I started making electronic music on my own after having several different projects in my early 20s. Because I was alone and it was purely electronic, sequencer-based, hypnotic grooves, I thought I needed to add something human, to have my voice.

During the pandemic, I was really depressed like many artists, so I started writing all these poems. Then [my poetry] was put on hold for my album City of Clowns — but then that album made me write more.

The pandemic was over but the urge to write remained, because traveling is so boring. I travel all the time and am at the airport. Traveler's Faith was an anti-boredom cure to try to not scroll on social media. Sometimes I get the blues as I travel, but at least I get to write a poem about it.

There are lyrics from City of Clowns in the album. Do you see a distinction between your poems and the words that end up in your music?

Absolutely not. On the next album I'm going to use some parts of Traveler's Faith. I'm working on new songs right now and they're not from Traveler's Faith, but they're in the same vein. It rhymes and it's a bit tongue and cheek, a bit melancholic always.

Most of this project is about airport drama and the toils of travel. Why is that your subject?

I always say bitching about airlines is my favorite pastime when I travel because I got so much shit from them. I have no pity for them. I hate them, but instead of just being grumpy, I write poems. My medicine is writing. I really try to be open and connect. A lot of strangers talk to me, people who don't know who Marie Davidson is. I enjoy that. I thrive on that down time. The non-glamorous moments are also when they're nice, they're also part of the traveler's experience — not just the DJ, producer, persona. I see it as an opportunity to learn things, to live life and grow.

Language is obviously very fraught and important in Quebec. This book is written in English. What's your relationship with writing in English?

Initially I was writing more in French. Something switched when I was writing City Of Clowns Then my label and the people doing the PR for i>City Of Clowns proposed I start a newsletter, so I started writing short essays for my newsletter in English, of course, because I wanted most people to understand what I was talking about. My English improved. I started writing all the time in English. I love words so much. I’m always on my phone checking words. I started to understand the English rhythm and I started to be really playful with it and I got in a trance. English makes me more playful than French, because it's so direct, so straight in your face. I'm a French native speaker, but I do write more in English nowadays.

You put together many albums now. What did you learn by putting together a book?

It's really something that started as a joke and became serious. The main effort was to start believing myself as a writer, believe my words were worth being published outside of a music record. And once that was done the rest came pretty easily. It flowed.

But also I have to thank the DEEWEE team for doing this with me. I would have never done this without them and I'm very grateful that they believe in me. And of course, for the beautiful pictures by Nadine Fraczkowski. The book would not be the same without her because her pictures were so poetic. That's how the idea of the book came: the team was looking at the pictures and the words and they were like there's something we should do with this. Gio Mo Moro, the graphic designer really helped a lot to to put it together. It's teamwork. I do the music alone, but not the book.