Patricia Smith (poet) facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Patricia Smith
Reading at the Library of Congress, 2013
Born	1955 (age 69–70) Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Occupation	Slam poet spoken-word performer playwright author writing teacher journalist
Genre	Poetry
Notable awards	Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize | 2021 Four-time National Poetry Slam champion
Spouse	Bruce DeSilva

Patricia Smith (born in 1955) is an American poet, spoken-word performer, and author. She is also a writing teacher and a former journalist. Her poems have appeared in many famous literary magazines and books. She teaches writing at the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing and Sierra Nevada University.

Patricia Smith is a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam. This is a competition where poets perform their original work. She was also featured in the 1996 movie SlamNation. This film showed different poetry teams competing at the 1996 National Poetry Slam.

Patricia Smith was the first African-American woman to write a weekly column for the Boston Globe newspaper. She has won many awards, including a Guggenheim fellowship and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is known as the most successful poet in the National Poetry Slam competition. Today, Smith teaches at Princeton University and Sierra Nevada University.

Patricia Smith's Amazing Career

Poetry and Performances

Patricia Smith's poems have been published in well-known literary journals. These include The Paris Review and TriQuarterly. Her work is also in many poetry collections, like The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry.

She has shared her poetry in many places around the world. She has performed in Stockholm, South Africa, and at the Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam. She has also toured in Germany, Austria, and Holland. In the U.S., she has performed at the National Book Festival and Carnegie Hall.

Her book Blood Dazzler was turned into a dance and theater show. This show was very popular and sold out for a week in New York City.

Plays and Adaptations

A famous writer named Derek Walcott created a one-woman play from some of Smith's poems. This play was performed in Boston and Trinidad. Another play, based on her book Life According to Motown, was performed in Hartford, Connecticut. The New York Times newspaper gave it a good review.

How Patricia Smith Started Writing

In an interview, Patricia Smith talked about how she began writing poetry. She said she first found poetry through performing on stage. She performed her poems for the first time at a slam poetry night in Chicago. This became a big part of her life.

At first, people saw her poems as performances. But later, they started to see them as real literature. This made her want to commit more to her writing. Smith wrote four poetry books before she joined a special writing program called an MFA program. She believes she became a poet and found her unique style long before her academic studies.

Smith also said that joining the MFA program later in life gave her freedom. She was already a successful and published poet. This meant she didn't need to chase awards or university approval.

Teaching and Contributions

Patricia Smith has helped many other writers. She offers poetry lessons to people of all ages, from young children to senior citizens. She has also contributed to many important poetry collections. These include Unsettling America and Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café.

Patricia Smith's Published Works

Early Books and Themes

Patricia Smith's first book was Life According to Motown, published in 1991. It was re-released for its 20th anniversary. This collection of poems is about her childhood in Chicago in the 1960s. It shares lessons learned from the good and tough times of the Motown era.

After Life According to Motown, she published Big Towns, Big Talks. This book continues the story, looking at life after childhood in Chicago.

Giving Voice to Others

Smith's poems often speak for black men in cities like New York, Chicago, and Boston. These are men who feel they have no options left. Publishers Weekly said that Smith is very good at capturing how people speak. This makes her poems, written from the perspective of black men, feel very real.

Her book Teahouse of the Almighty is a collection of free-verse poems. It covers many topics like love, family, religion, and feminism. One poem is about a real event where a 15-year-old boy gave his heart to his girlfriend. In another poem, Smith talks about her religious views. Critics have praised this book. One called it a "stunning mix of sound and sense."

Historical and Social Commentary

Patricia Smith also wrote a history book called Africans in America: America's Journey through Slavery. This book was made to go along with a TV series on PBS.

Her collection Incendiary Art explores the experiences of African-American people. It looks at the killing of Emmett Till and its impact. This collection uses many different poetry styles, like prose, ghazels, and sonnets.

In Gotta Go Gotta Flow, Patricia Smith combines her poems with photos by Michael Abramson. These photos show Chicago's South Side in the 1970s. One reviewer called this book "a supremely arresting and affecting match of potent images and singing words."

Award-Winning Collections

For her book Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, Smith won three awards. These include the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. This collection features poems about Chicago and Detroit. It talks about first love, Motown music, and personal journeys. A judge for one of the awards said her poems "plunge to the soul-depths of the people who inhabit them."

Patricia Smith's Awards and Honors

Poetry Awards

Her book Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah won the 2014 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt Award. She was also a finalist for the National Book Award in 2008. She has won the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award in Poetry and the Carl Sandburg Literary Award. Other awards include the National Poetry Series award and two Pushcart Prizes.

In 2006, she was honored by being added to the International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent. She also received fellowships from McDowell and Yaddo. For Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, she won the Lenore Marshall Prize. This award is given for the most outstanding book of poetry published in America the previous year.

Her book "Incendiary Art" won the NAACP Image Award. It was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. This collection also won the 2018 Kingsley Tufts poetry award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for poetry.

Journalism Recognition

Patricia Smith won the Distinguished Writing Award for Commentary in 1997. This was from the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE).

Patricia Smith's Personal Life

Patricia Smith was born in 1955 in Chicago, Illinois. She studied at Southern Illinois University and Northwestern University.

She is married to Bruce DeSilva, who is also a journalist and an award-winning author. She lives in Howell, New Jersey.

See also

• Poetry slam