Tracy K. Smith – författare

SHORTLISTED FOR THE FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST COLLECTION 2018A New York Times Notable Book of 2018Even the men in black armor, the onesJangling handcuffs and keys, what elseAre they so buffered against, if not love's bladeSizing up the heart's familiar meat?In Wade in the Water, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tracy K. Smith's signature voice - inquisitive, lyrical and wry - turns over what it means to be a citizen, a mother and an artist in a culture arbitrated by wealth, men and violence. The various connotations of the title, taken from a spiritual once sung on the Underground Railroad which smuggled slaves to safety in 19th-century America, resurface throughout the book, binding past and present together. Collaged voices and documents recreate both the correspondence between slave owners and the letters sent home by African Americans enlisted in the US Civil War. Survivors' reports attest to the experiences of recent immigrants and refugees. Accounts of near-death experiences intertwine with the modern-day fallout of a corporation's illegal pollution of a major river and the surrounding land; and, in a series of beautiful lyrical pieces, the poet's everyday world and the growth and flourishing of her daughter are observed with a tender and witty eye. Marrying the contemporary and the historical to a sense of the transcendent, haunted and holy, this is a luminous book by one of America's essential poets.

Drawing on deep passion and personal experience, former US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith demystifies the art form that has too often been mischaracterised as “inaccessible”, “irrelevant” or “intimidating”. She argues that poetry is rooted in fundamentally human qualities innate to our capacities to love, dream, question and engage across diverse cultures and backgrounds. Lifting the veil on her own creative process, Smith shows us how reading and writing poetry allows us to confront life’s many uncertainties and losses, to build camaraderie with strangers and to understand ourselves. She grounds readers in the technical elements of the craft and provides close readings of the works of contemporary poets, alongside classic poems. By reimagining and re-examining the age-old art form, Fear Less is a warm invitation to find meaning, consolation and hope through poetry.A Norton Short

Drawing on deep passion and personal experience, former US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith demystifies the art form that has too often been mischaracterised as “inaccessible”, “irrelevant” or “intimidating”. She argues that poetry is rooted in fundamentally human qualities innate to our capacities to love, dream, question and engage across diverse cultures and backgrounds. Lifting the veil on her own creative process, Smith shows us how reading and writing poetry allows us to confront life’s many uncertainties and losses, to build camaraderie with strangers and to understand ourselves. She grounds readers in the technical elements of the craft and provides close readings of the works of contemporary poets, alongside classic poems. By reimagining and re-examining the age-old art form, Fear Less is a warm invitation to find meaning, consolation and hope through poetry.A Norton Short

In this brilliant collection of new poems, Tracy K. Smith envisions a sci-fi future sucked clean of any real dangers, contemplates the dark matter that keeps people both close and distant and revisits kitschy concepts like 'love' and 'illness', now relegated to the museum of obsolescence. With allusions to David Bowie and interplanetary travel, Life on Mars imagines a soundtrack for the universe, accompanying the discoveries, failures and oddities of human existence and establishing Smith as one of the best poets of her generation.

The 2021 edition of the leading collection of contemporary American poetry is guest edited by the former US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, providing renewed proof that this is “a ‘best’ anthology that really lives up to its title” (Chicago Tribune).Since 1988, The Best American Poetry series has been “one of the mainstays of the poetry publication world” (Academy of American Poets). Each volume presents a choice of the year’s most memorable poems, with comments from the poets themselves lending insight into their work. The guest editor of The Best American Poetry 2021 is Tracy K. Smith, the former United States Poet Laureate, whose own poems are, Toi Derricotte’s words, “beautiful and serene” in their surfaces with an underlying “sense of an unknown vastness.” In The Best American Poetry 2021, Smith has selected a distinguished array of works both vast and beautiful by such important voices as Henri Cole, Billy Collins, Louise Erdrich, Nobel laureate Louise Glück, Terrance Hayes, and Kevin Young.