Mr. Smith is tied to Louisiana through Louisiana State University where he taught from 1990-2002 and was co-editor of Southern Review. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, including, most recently, The Wick of Memory: New and Selected Poems, 1970-2000 (Louisiana State University, 2000); Floating on Solitude: Three Volumes of Poetry (University of Illinois, 1996); Fate’s Kite: Poems 1991-1995 (1996); Cuba Night (Quill, 1990), and two works of fiction. Among Smith’s many honors are fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, an Award of Excellence from the American Academy and Institute for Arts and Letters, the Prairie Schooner Reader’s Award, and nominations for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.
Smith is editor of the
Southern Messenger Signature Poets series of Louisiana State University Press and for many years was co-editor of Southern Review. Smith has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in Poetry, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Lyndhurst Fellowship as well as the Virginia Prize in Poetry and an Award in Poetry from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He is an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He is presently Elliot Coleman Professor of Poetry at Johns Hopkins University.
