Literary Birthday – 16 April – Tracy K. Smith

Happy Birthday, Tracy K. Smith, born on 16 April 1972.

Tracy K. Smith Quotes

1. Once I started writing all the time and interacting with poets, I made a conscious decision to identify myself as a poet. It’s funny how much a single word can provide focus and direction.
2. I am very conscious of the vulnerability of beginning writers. I push my students toward a more rigorous sense of craft and a more daring use of material and observation.
3. A question is a pursuit, an invitation to envision and explore a series of possibilities, to struggle and empathise and doubt and believe. The question moves, whereas our sense of what an answer is can often be static, a stopping point.
4.  I see my responsibility to my material as a matter of writing toward the truth. And the truth is many different things at once — many different truths.
5. For me, a poem is an opportunity to kind of interrogate myself a little bit.
6. I think humans have always felt watched back by whatever is out there flickering in the distance. What excites me is what the imagination creates not simply in explanation of what is there, but also to explain or justify the feeling of awe and attachment that the heavens inspire. Sometimes those answers set beautiful things into motion: compassion, hope, a desire to create something that will last.
7. I always encourage my students to seek analogies between their outside interests and their process as poets. Everything should make its way into the poems, because everything makes a mark upon the poet.

Tracy K. Smith is an African-American poet, memoirist, editor, translator, and librettist. Smith received her B.A. from Harvard University, where she studied with poets like Seamus Heaney. She won the Pulitzer Prize for her 2011 poetry collection, Life on Mars. Her memoir, Ordinary Light, was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in non-fiction. She served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017 – 2019. Her honours include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Harold Washington Literary Award, the Academy Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets, the Harvard Arts Medal, the Columbia Medal for Excellence, a Smithsonian Ingenuity Award, and an Essence Literary Award. She is the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University, and a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute. Follow her on Instagram.

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