PATRICIA SMITH’s latest poetry book is
Blood Dazzler (Coffee House Press, 2008).
Teahouse of the Almighty (Coffee House Press), was chosen by Edward Sanders as a 2005 National Poetry Series winner, and was also awarded the 2007 Paterson Poetry Prize. She is the author of three previous books of poetry -
Close to Death (Zoland Books),
Big Towns, Big Talk (Zoland Books) and
Life According to Motown (Tia Chucha) and
Blood Dazzler (Coffee House Press) will be published in September, 2008. Her poems have appeared in
The Paris Review, The Chautauqua Literary Journal, TriQuarterly, and other journals, and in many groundbreaking anthologies-most recently
Gathering Ground, The Spoken Word Revolution, The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry and
Short Fuse: The Global Anthology of New Fusion Poetry. Her poem "The Way Pilots Walk" received a Pushcart Prize.
Smith is four-time national individual champion of the notorious and wildly popular National Poetry Slam, an energized competition where poets are judged on the content and performance of their work. Recognized as one of the world’s most formidable performers, she was featured in the nationally released film “Slamnation,” and appeared on the award-winning HBO series “Russel Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam.” Smith has read her work at venues round the world, including the Poets Stage in Stockholm, Rotterdam’s Poetry International Festival, the Aran Islands International Poetry and Prose Festival and on tour in Germany, Austria and Holland. In the U.S., she’s performed at Carnegie Hall, Bumbershoot, the inaugural Palm Beach Poetry Festival, the Folger Shakespeare Library and St. Mark’s Poetry Project, sharing the stage with noted writers such as Adrienne Rich, Sharon Olds, Rita Dove, Joyce Carol Oates, Allen Ginsberg, Walter Mosley, Gwendolyn Brooks, Billy Collins, Galway Kinnell and “Lord of the Rings” star Viggo Morgensen. She has also collaborated musically with Philip Pemberton and the blues band Bop Thunderous, and is occasionally a vocalist with the stellar improvisational jazz group, Bill Cole’s Untempered Ensemble.
A selection of Smith’s poetry was produced as a one-woman play 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.
Recordings of Patricia Smith’s work can be found on the CD “Always in the Head” 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 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 budding voiceover artist, she was the radio voice of the Oil of Olay Total Effects product line.
Smith is currently at work on
Fixed on a Furious Star, a biography of Harriet Tubman. Previously she authored
Africans in America (Harcourt Brace), a companion volume to the groundbreaking four-part PBS history series.
Her first children’s book,
Janna and the Kings, a New Voices Award winner, was published in 2003, and her second,
Mahina, the Mad Mad Moon was just completed. She is also writing a young adult novel,
The Journey of Willie J, as well as
Blood Dazzler, a book of poetry about the human toll exacted by Hurricane Katrina.
An accomplished and sought-after instructor of poetry, performance and creative writing, Smith is proud to be a Cave Canem faculty member, as well as a former Bruce McEver Chair in Writing at Georgia Tech University. Currently she does workshops and residencies customized for all age groups.
In October of 2006, during the Gwendolyn Brooks Creative Writing Conference at Chicago State University, Patricia was inducted into the International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent.
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