Tracy K. Smith, Poet Laureate of the United States will be meeting with IU’s Adrian Matejka, Poet Laureate of Indiana, for conversation and reading this Thursday in the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center at 7:30 p.m.
Smith won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2012 for her poetry collection “Life on Mars,” the Whiting Award for Poetry in 2005 and the Cave Canem Prize in 2002 for best first book by an African American poet, according to IU’s College of Arts and Sciences website.
Writing poems of challenge and beauty, Smith’s most recent volume of poetry, “Wade in the Water” was published in 2018, and draws on weighty subjects revolving around the offenses of our contemporary world, according to Visit Bloomington’s website.
Smith is one of the College Arts & Humanities Institute’s distinguished speakers this year, and the visit is supported by the Arts and Humanities Council, the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society and the Office of the Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Multicultural Affairs, according to CAHI’s website.
Smith said when she became Poet Laureate she wanted to travel the nation to give people more access to poetry who may not have had it otherwise, based on CAHI’s website.
