Patricia Smith, an acclaimed poet and professor of creative writing at Princeton, received the National Book Award for Poetry on Friday for her new poetry collection, “The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems.”
Her collection was selected from five finalists, including books by Cathy Linh Che, Richard Siken, Tiana Clark, and Gabrielle Calvocoressi. When Smith stepped onto the stage to receive the National Book Award for Poetry, her speech was a reckoning, invoking her family’s matrilineal line and how poetry had transformed her identity as a Black woman.
For Smith, much of her poetic gravitas and inspiration came from her experiences with her mother and her mother’s ongoing battle with memory loss — her “emptied mother,” she said, who she would often ask if she knew “anyone named Patricia.”
But the hope of her mother having a moment of recognition galvanized Smith to commit to her poetry. She longed for the opportunity to tell her mother that her poetry has “burned a new history.” However, the only response she got was “You’re ugly.”
She used those words, however, to shape her own story about feeling that she had to escape the metaphysical bounds of her own skin. “I was taught that I needed to escape the black that surrounded me. Black that kept me ugly and stupid and all the way down,” Smith said. Her poetry and her mother were the two spotlights that cut through this dark abyss.
“But what did the poet say to me? Chile, look at where you are,” Smith said.
This line, “Chile, look at where you are,” became an incantation through the remainder of the speech, evoking her poetic journey from when she first questioned her identity as a little girl to finding the fortitude to love her mother unconditionally. Each repetition crescendoed as it filled the gaps of her story. Smith ended back in the present with “Gwen and Audre and Wanda and Toni and June,” who tell her mother to look at where she is: “That’s your baby girl, standing there in front of all them folks. Chile, look at where she is.”
Smith read from from her book at Labyrinth Books in early October, as well as from previous published works like “Salutations, In Search Of” and “Blood Dazzler.”
Smith wasn’t the only Princeton professor represented at the 76th National Book Awards. Yiyun Li, professor of creative writing, was also nominated for the prize in Nonfiction this year with her book, “Things in Nature Merely Grow.” Li did not win the award.
Michael Grasso is a contributing writer for The Prospect and a member of the Class of 2029. He can be reached at mg7604@princeton.edu.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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