Patricia Smith
An award-winning poet, playwright, journalist
and performer, Patricia Smith is a renaissance
artist of undeniable and unmistakable signature.
She has done it all, and she has done it fiercely
and well--it began with the realization that
the word, in all its glorious incarnation,
was always her most faithful and unflinching
ally.
As a performance poet: Smith has read her
work at the Poets Stage in Stockholm, Rotterdam's
Poetry International Festival, the Aran Islands
International Poetry and Prose Festival, Expo
90 in Osaka, the Bahia Festival, the Sorbonne
in Paris and on tour in Germany, Austria and
Holland. In 2002, she took the stage at Carnegie
Hall as part of jazz innovator Bill Cole's
60th birthday celebration. She has also performed
in a number of major American academic and
performance venues including Bumbershoot,
the Writers Voice, South by Southwest Music
Festival, the Bisbee Poetry Festival, St.
Mark's Poetry Project, Black Roots at the
Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center, the
Painted Bride, and on tour with Lollapalooza.
Smith has shared the stage with Adrienne Rich,
Sharon Olds, Allen Ginsburg, Walter Mosley,
Joyce Carol Oates, Ntozake Shange, Gwendolyn
Brooks and Galway Kinnell. She was featured
in the nationally-released film "Slamnation,"
recently appeared on an episode of the HBO
series "Def Poetry Jam," and performed
the poem "Awakening" at the 1991
inauguration of Mayor Richard Daley in Chicago.
Smith is four-time national individual champion
of the notorious and wildly popular poetry
slam, an energized competition where poets
are judged on the content and performance
of their work. In 1997, she "tied"
with Jimmy Santiago Baca for the Taos Poetry
Circle World Heavyweight Championship of Poetry,
in what organizers have called the bout's
most controversial decision.
In 1998, Smith began collaborating with musicians
in order to break new ground during her performances--an
experiment which has led to two immensely
rewarding alliances. She now frequently appears
with her band Bop Thunderous; the group has
just completed a self-titled debut CD. She
is also a vocalist with Paradigm Shift, a
stellar improvisational jazz group whose members
have worked with Sonny Rollins, Charlie Parker
and Miles Davis.
Recordings of Patricia Smith's work can be
found on the CD "Always in the Head"
(Wordsmith Press), as well as in the compilations
"Grand Slam," "A Snake in the
Heart" "By Someone's Good Graces"
and "Lip." A short film of Smith
performing the poem "Undertaker,"
produced by San Francisco's Tied to the Tracks
Films, won awards at the Sundance and San
Francisco Film Festivals and earned a prestigious
Cable Ace Award as part of the Lifetime Network's
first annual Women's Film Festival.
As a published poet: Smith is the author
of three volumes of poetry--Close to Death
(Zoland Books), Big Towns, Big Talk (Zoland
Books) and Life According to Motown (Tia Chucha).
In reviewing Close to Death for Library Journal,
Louis McKee said, "...souls rage from
the hellfire of the streets, and Smith effectively
captures the language and urgency, the rhythms
and fury." In her review of Big Towns
in Choice, Maria Gillan wrote, "The voices
that emerges in her poems is strong, fearless
and passionate."
Smith's poems have been published in The
Paris Review, TriQuarterly, AGNI and other
literary journals, and in the anthologies
Bum Rush the Page, The Garden Thrives, Children
Remember Their Fathers, The Outlaw Bible of
American Poetry, Aloud: Voices from Nuyorican
Poets Café, Revival: Spoken Word from
Lollapalooza, Unsettling America, Spirit and
Flame and Power Lines. She has won the prestigious
Carl Sandburg Award, as well as a literary
award from the Illinois Arts Council and an
honorary degree from the John Jay College
of Criminal Justice.
Smith is currently compiling a book of collected
works, as well as two new books, Cracked Love
and Teahouse of the Almighty.
As a playwright/performer: In 2003, The Play
Company in New York City produced "Professional
Suicide," a one-woman show that got its
start during the summer of 2001 while Smith
was writer-in-residence at the Eugene O'Neill
Theater Center in Waterford, Ct.
Selections from Smith's poetry volumes were
previously adapted for the theater and presented
as a solo performance piece, produced by Nobel
Prize winner Derek Walcott and performed at
both Boston University Playwrights Theater
and the historic Trinidad Theater Workshop.
Another play based on Life According to Motown
was staged by Company One Theater in Hartford,
Ct. and reviewed favorably in The New York
Times.
As an author/journalist: Smith was the author
of Africans in America, a chronicle of slavery
in this country and the companion volume to
the groundbreaking four-part PBS series. Publishers
Weekly called Africans "a monumental
research effort wed with fine writing...ultimately
shaped by Smith's beautiful narrative,"
and Michelle Cliff of the San Jose Mercury
News said, "With its vivid language and
historical integrity, Africans in America
is a major contribution to this country's
written history."
Smith was a staff columnist for Ms. Magazine,
as well as columnist-at-large for Afazi.com.
Her essays will be featured in two upcoming
anthologies: Convictions and Seasons of the
Day: African-American Women on Motherhood.
A newspaper journalist for 20 years, Smith
was most recently a city columnist at the
Boston Globe. During her tenure as a reporter
and columnist, she won honors from the National
Society of Black Journalists, a distinguished
writing award for commentary and column writing
from the American Society of Newspaper Editors,
and in 1998 she was a finalist for the Pulitzer
Prize in commentary.
As a teacher and lecturer: Smith teaches
writing during residences and conferences
and speaks often in schools, hoping to foster
a love for the energy of the written word.
She has taught poetry and memoir writing at
the Writers Voice in New York, and was an
instructor in the Cave Canem program for African-American
writers. Her favorite audience of all time
was the 6th grade class at Lillie C. Evans
Elementary School, Dade County, Miami.
Christopher Lydon interviews Online School
of Poetry instructor Patricia Smith on NPR.
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Real Player to listen to the interview
