Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, Thursday Evening, April 4

The evening reading was held in the Ataloa Theatre in the Hallie Brown Ford Arts Center on the East Central University campus & was by the United States Poet Laureate for 2017 - 2019 Tracy K. Smith.

Ken Hada introduced for the venerable Dr. Darryl Fisher for the opening remarks; the annual writing contest for Oklahoma high school students is named after Dr. Fisher. Then it was fitting that Jennifer Dorsey, who coordinates the undergraduate writing program at ECU, introduced student Taylor Johnson who read an excerpt from her novel.

Steve Benton, Director of the University Honors Program, gave the introduction to Laureate Smith’s reading, an introduction that was based on a close, sensitive reading of her books, not just the glowing, admiring generalizations that often infect such introductions.

In the past I have not always been happy with the choices of the US Poet Laureate, but I was thrilled with the selection of Juan Felipe Herrera & was blown away by the couple of times I saw him in person, at Skidmore College & at the Library of Congress. I described him to to someone as my “Mexican uncle.” I was not familiar with the work of Tracy K. Smith but her reading here at Scissortail made me a fan; she ranks up there with Herrera, perhaps a “black niece I hadn’t met before.” She did not shy away from themes of social justice, such as the poem “It and Company” about America & playing on the word “it.” She read mostly from her latest book Wade in the Water (Graywolf, 2018), including “Declaration” which is an erasure of the Declaration of Independence, also a found poem from letters of slave-holding families “The Greatest Personal Privation,” “The United States Welcomes You,” & the title poem. There was also the tender poem about her willful daughter “4 1/2.” Smith has also worked with the Chinese feminist poet Yi Lei, who sadly died last year; a translation of Yi Lei’s work is forthcoming from Graywolf Press, a collaboration between Smith & Chantai Bi. Her poem “Eternity” is about a visit to China & thinking about past lives. She ended her reading with the last poem in Wade in the Water “Old Story” about how we need new myths.

As the best readings do, this evening opened my eyes to new work I hadn’t been familiar with, as well as a poet, Yi Lei, that I’m looking forward to reading.