Acclaimed poet and performance artist Patricia Smith to deliver Convocation address

Patricia Smith, an award-winning poet who is a legend in National Poetry Slam circles, will deliver Lawrence University’s annual University Convocation address on Jan. 24.

The poet, teacher, playwright, and performance artist will speak at 12:30 p.m. in Memorial Chapel.

Smith is the author of Unshuttered (2023), Incendiary Art (2017), Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah (2012), and Blood Dazzler (2008), among other acclaimed books. She has been a leading voice in poetry and spoken word performance for more than three decades.

“We are so lucky to have this amazing poet and performing artist here on our campus,” said Catherine Kautsky, the George and Marjorie Olsen Chandler Professor of Music and co-chair of the faculty committee leading the 2024-25 convocations. “She not only writes great poetry, but she speaks it with an intensity and fire that makes one feel as if poetry is the most potent language the world has to offer.”

Students of Lawrence’s First-Year Studies course will be familiar with Smith, her Blood Dazzler being among the works studied this year. The book of poetry was a finalist for the National Book Foundation’s National Book Awards in 2008, with judges hailing it for chronicling the human, physical, and emotional toll exacted by Hurricane Katrina.

“Out of the maelstrom of the Slam, Patricia Smith conjures a harsh and elegant poetry in Blood Dazzler,” the judges wrote. “Readers suspicious of her performance pedigree will note the formal ingenuity, whether sonnet, tanka, or collage. At the same time, the audience who prefers the live mic will be seized by the power of her voices, including that of Katrina ‘in full tantrum.’ From a confluence of poetic sensibilities, in a hot political wind, Smith rises above mere topicality to address timeless concerns.”

Smith has continued to build an audience and collect major honors in the years since Blood Dazzler. She is a Guggenheim fellow, a Civitellian, a National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient, a finalist for the Neustadt Prize, a two-time winner of the Pushcart Prize, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry (for Incendiary Art), and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam, the most successful poet in the competition’s history. She is a professor in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, a former Distinguished Professor for the City University of New York, an Academy of American Poets Chancellor, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Several Lawrence faculty members hosted a Jan. 16 forum in Main Hall in which Smith’s works were discussed, a prelude to the much-anticipated Convocation.

The Winter Term convocation, known as University Convocation, is the second of three convocations held each academic year at Lawrence. It annually features an invited guest speaker to share ideas and insight on contemporary issues. The first convocation of the year, the Matriculation Convocation, held in September, features a welcoming address from the university president to kick off a new academic year. And the Spring Term convocation, known as the Honors Convocation, celebrates student and faculty achievements and includes an address from a selected member of the faculty. It will be held at 12:30 p.m. May 30 in Memorial Chapel, with Allison Fleshman, associate professor of chemistry, delivering the address.

The convocations are free and open to the public.