Patricia Smith to give keynote address at UNH’s Black New England Conference

The voice of Patricia Smith is for many the sound of slam poetry. But her voice carries through all her writing, whether it be poetry, novels, plays, journalism or children’s books.

Smith is also a teacher and lecturer, and her voice can be heard at the University of New Hampshire in a keynote address for the Black New England Conference on Friday, June 13. The two-day conference, “Black New England Stories: Literature, Art, and Oratory,” will focus on expression and creativity.

In the address, “Resurrecting Necessary Breath,” Smith will explore the spiritual link of ancestry in a presentation including images of 19th century black New Englanders from her extensive private collection.

“I call them my ghosts, because initially we started to track down families of people and give the photos back to them, but the trail was cold in a lot of instances,” she said of the photographs. “So I look at them and try to imagine lives for them.”
Smith is a four-time national individual champion of the National Poetry Slam (no one else has won the title more than twice). She has also appeared on the HBO series “Def Poetry Jam.” Though she hasn’t participated in a slam in about 10 years, she says it’s difficult to shake the slam poet label due to its visibility.

Smith’s 2006 book of poetry, “Teahouse of the Almighty,” was a National Poetry Series winner. Her new book, “Blood Dazzler,” will be released this year. She is also the author of three previous books of poetry, “Close to Death,” “Big Towns, Big Talk” and “Life According to Motown.” She is currently writing “Fixed on a Furious Star,” a biography of Harriet Tubman. She is also writing a young adult novel, “The Journey of Willie J.” Her first children’s book, “Janna and the Kings,” was a New Voices Award winner and her second, “Mahina, the Mad Mad Moon” was just completed.

A newspaper journalist for 20 years, Smith was a city columnist at the Boston Globe in 1998 when she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary. The nomination was withdrawn, however, when it was revealed that some of her writing was fabricated. She has since focused on creative writing and, in 2006, she was inducted into the International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent.

“I figure that if you say you’re impassioned about writing, you should write in as many ways as you can,” she said. “One of the travesties with a lot of artists I know is that they box themselves in really quickly. … As far as I can see, we’re all starting with the same canvas and we’re all storytellers. I should be able to take a story and pour it into any form I want.”
The Wire recently talked to Smith in advance of her upcoming appearance in Durham.

When you write in all these different ways, are there similarities throughout?

Poetry is it for me, if I had to define myself as one type of writer. It forces me to be lyrical and to tell huge stories in small spaces. Because of that, you pay stark attention to the language, and I’m always playing with words to try and see if I can create a word that will say exactly what I want it to say or using familiar words in unfamiliar ways.

When I’m writing prose I’m just looking at the poem and saying, “What happened before the instance of this poem and where did it go afterwards?” The style of writing, although it may look physically different, is still the style that I use in my poetry. I think I’ve been doing poetry long enough that I have what I hope is a signature so that someone would be able to read something I’ve written and be able to guess that it’s mine. Even when I’m writing non-fiction, I’m doing it in a way that has a heavy poetic element because that’s what makes the writing come alive for me.

When people ask me about writer’s block, I say, if I’m writing in one genre and I get stuck, I switch to another one. The reason I jump so easily is I don’t put those barriers up and say, “For this genre I must change my style or I must learn new rules.” It’s just, this is the type of writer I am.

In addition to writing in a lot of different genres, you’re also able to take on different personas in your writing. How do you do that so convincingly, and why do you choose to so often?

All good writing extends from an intense curiosity. The writing itself is usually an attempt to answer a question. We’re always curious about other people. The way to explore that is to get yourself out of the way.

There’s a poem that I have that’s in the voice of a skinhead, which freaks people out on several levels. But, we started at the same point, both he and I, and for some reason he veered off one way and I veered off the other way. The writing was an attempt to bring us back to that common point. I try to start to create what could have happened to him that he reached this point. It’s easier for me if I’m not filtering that story through myself all the time and trying to let the story originate with him.
I think it’s got a real power. I think it’s really difficult to write about other people unless we’ve reached some uncomfortable point in their lives. I don’t hit it on the nose all the time, but I look at it as an exploration. It helps me to write convincingly about other people if I do whatever I can first to get myself out of the way, and that’s what persona does for me.

What influence has slam poetry had on written poetry?

There’s a constant battle being waged and it’s increasingly frustrating. From the time I started, there was always this slam poets versus page poets. The slam poets were getting such big audiences so quickly. Those are the kind of audiences that the poetry world in large hungers for, and they were wondering “What do they do to do that?” On the other hand, they’re saying, “We didn’t sanction that.” The slam poets, really in their heart of hearts, are thinking, “Maybe we’re not legitimate,” even though they’re really blustery on the outside and being defiant. And then the academic poets are saying, “Maybe we’re being left behind.”

I think what’s happened is the slam was a recreational exercise for a lot of people, including myself. When my books came out and started selling, it was like, “Oh, a slam poet sells books.” We’re all writers. Some people turned more into performers than writers, and some people decided to stick with the writing.

When people talk to me as a representative of the whole slam thing, I make sure that they know how wide the realm of what I do is. The only remnant of slam that’s left with me is the desire to make something different out of what you may think is going to be ordinary, and my comfort in front of audiences. I don’t get nervous. It doesn’t matter if it’s a huge audience, a small audience, an audience that’s with me, an audience that’s against me. I’ve been in front of every type of audience. It’s a confidence that it taught me. Slam helped me to forge my voice. The best way to do that is in front of an audience. The audience will tell you, you’ll see it in their faces or you’ll talk to them after you’re done, and they will guide you in the most immediate way. My work kind of gets honed by doing that, so it’s the best way of editing, deciding what’s important to people, to be out among them reading and to hear from them.

You have a really powerful voice and I was wondering if you ever consider it kind of a weapon for change in the same way that the pen is mightier than the sword. If you do, what do you fight for with your voice?

I insist on going into a lot of schools that no one else will go into because that’s the kind of school I grew up in. If someone had come there at any time and said, “I am a writer and this is an option that’s available to you,” then my life would have been changed that much sooner. But that was so far away from my realm of experience. I think there are kids increasingly getting trapped in situations and trapped in neighborhoods and feeling as if the only thing they can do is just put their head down and work through it and just to be able to say, “I have an arena where I can take all this and that no one else ever has to see, and I can get from one place in my head to a safer place in my head simply by writing.” So you go into places where kids are seeing violence all the time and they have problems with their families, and you teach them that there’s nothing that they can’t write about.

I’ll be reading and they’ll say, “You have poems about things that go on in your family that especially African American families don’t talk about.” I mean, my mother doesn’t talk to me right now because I’ve written about family things. It’s not only for audiences that we’re writing. The change comes when you realize you can use the writing to process in your own life and to let people know that it’s a weapon they have.

It’s been said that sometimes your approach to poetry and journalism has blended together. Is that a fair description of why you got creative with journalism at the Boston Globe?

Probably. It’s kind of like we’re all supposed to be in a certain place doing a certain thing. I think, in my heart, I was always supposed to be a creative writer. You get little nudges in that direction. I wasn’t paying any attention. So it was like burning it all clean.

The only thing that emerged from that was the poetry community was really incredibly strong, and I didn’t have to stop writing. That’s one of the reasons I’m so gung ho about writing in as many ways as possible. It helped me see I need to be over here. What I got was the poetic element in my life. After a while, that became the focal point in it for me and that’s what it’s always been.

What people would respond to were the things I put in poetically. At the end of a story, you’d go, “Well, I need this and you don’t have it, so I’m just going to do this one time. I’m going to put it in here.” That’s the thing that people respond to. So it’s kind of like this vicious circle, but I think it was like a blow torch coming through and saying, “When the smoke is cleared and we’ve got this ground leveled again, what’s going to be left is what you really should be doing.” I’m doing all kinds of creative writing and it’s a really good place for me to be … It’s not an uncomfortable topic. It took a long time for it not to be. It’s fine now.      

The free and open keynote address by Patricia Smith begins in the Memorial Union Building Theater I on Friday, July 13 at 7 p.m. at the University of New Hampshire.