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Workshop: Patricia Smith

Poet Patricia Smith leads a four-week workshop on the art of poetry, offered in celebration of her recent publication, "The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems." Registration requested.

About the book (from the publisher): 

"The Intentions of Thunder" gathers, for the first time, the essential work from across Patricia Smith’s decorated career. Here, Smith’s poems, affixed with her remarkable gift of insight, present a rapturous ode to life. With careful yet vaulting movement, these poems traverse the redeeming landscape of pain, confront the frightening revelations of history, and disclose the joyous possibilities of the future. The result is a profound testament to the necessity of poetry—all the careful witness, embodied experience, and bristling pleasure that it bestows—and of Smith’s necessary voice.

Lyrical and sly, meditative and volcanic, "The Intentions of Thunder" stunningly explores the fullness of living. The inimitable poetry of Patricia Smith radiates in "The Intentions of Thunder"—reaffirming Smith’s place as one of the indispensable poets of our time.

About the Author:

Patricia Smith is an inductee of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the recipient of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for Lifetime Achievement. She is the author of nine acclaimed books of poetry, including "Unshuttered;" "Incendiary Art," finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize and winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the 2017 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the 2018 NAACP Image Award; "Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah," winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; and "Blood Dazzler," a National Book Award finalist. A Guggenheim Fellow, a National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient, a finalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam, Smith is a creative writing professor in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University and a former distinguished professor at the City University of New York. She lives in New Jersey with her husband.

Photograph by Sandro Miller

Presented with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this programming do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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