Fear Less: Tracy K. Smith on Poetry in Perilous Times
About this episode
Tracy K. Smith discusses her book 'Fear Less' and the role of poetry in challenging times with host Adam Biles.
Tracy K. Smith comes to Shakespeare and Company for a conversation with Adam Biles. They discuss her book Fear Less: Poetry in Perilous Times , a bold manifesto on poetry as a tool for deeper living, clearer thinking, and more compassionate citizenship. Drawing on her time as US Poet Laureate, Smith reflects on taking poetry to rural America, and how poems, unlike political debate, can open rather than entrench. She talks about the origins of Fear Less , and why she chose to write a love letter to the art form rather than a polemic. Smith also reads from her forthcoming collection The Forest , sharing new poems on war, complicity, the divine feminine, and an expansive, unsettling "us" that includes those we revile. Buy Fear Less: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/fear-less-4 Tracy K. Smith was born in Massachusetts and raised in northern California. She earned a BA from Harvard University and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. From 1997 to 1999 she held a Stegner fellowship at Stanford University. Smith is the author of four books of poetry: The Body's Question (2003), which won the Cave Canem prize for the best first book by an African-American…
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