Keystone to Present Poet Patricia Smith

La Plume – In celebration of National Poetry Month, the Keystone College Concerts and Lectures Series will present a poetry reading by acclaimed poet Patricia Smith on Tuesday, April 3 at 7 p.m. in Evans Hall, Hibbard Campus Center. The event is free and the public is invited to attend.

Patricia Smith is the author of five poetry volumes. Blood Dazzler, which chronicles the human, physical and emotional toll exacted by Hurricane Katrina, was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award.

Ms. Smith is also the author of Teahouse of the Almighty, a National Poetry Series winner, the Best Poetry Book of 2006 on About.com, and a 2007 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and Paterson Poetry Prize winner; Close to Death, Big Towns, Big Talk and Life According to Motown. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, TriQuarterly, and other literary journals/anthologies. Her poem “The Way Pilots Walk” received a Pushcart Prize, and is featured in Pushcart Prize XXXII: Best of the Small Presses.

Recognized as a performer, Ms. Smith has read her work at venues around the world, including the Poets Stage in Stockholm, Rotterdam’s Poetry International Festival, and on tour in Germany, Austria and Holland. In the United States, she’s performed at Carnegie Hall, the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, the Folger Shakespeare Library and St. Mark’s Poetry Project, sharing the stage with several noted writers.

Ms. Smith is a four-time national individual champion of Poetry Slam, the most successful competitor in slam history. She was also featured in the nationally-released film “Slamnation,” and appeared on the award-winning HBO series “Def Poetry Jam.”

Ms. Smith is currently at work on the verse memoir Shoulda Been Jimmie Savannah and the young adult novel The Journey of Willie J. Previously she authored Africans in America, a companion volume to the groundbreaking four-part PBS history series.

An accomplished and sought-after instructor of poetry, performance and creative writing, Ms. Smith is a Cave Canem faculty member, as well as a professor of English at CUNY/College of Staten Island and a faculty member of the Stonecoast master’s of fine art program at the University of Southern Maine.