Patricia Smith—The Intentions of Thunder: New & Selected Poems

Join us for an evening celebrating the release of The Intentions of Thunder, a collection of new and selected poems from one of the most groundbreaking voices in contemporary poetry.

The Intentions of Thunder collects poems spanning from three decades of Patricia Smith’s decorated career, from 1991 (Life According to Motown) to 2023 (Unshuttered), as well as uncollected works gathered here for the first time. The result is a profound testament both to Smith’s remarkable gift of insight and to poetry’s power as witness and relation of embodied experience. Lyrical and sly, meditative and volcanic, The Intentions of Thunder explores the fullness of living and reaffirms Smith’s place as one of the indispensable poets of our time.

Patricia Smith is an inductee of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the recipient of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for Lifetime Achievement. She is the author of nine acclaimed books of poetry, including Incendiary Art, finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize, the 2017 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the 2018 NAACP Image Award; Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; and Blood Dazzler, a National Book Award finalist. Her many honors include a Guggenheim fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam. Smith is a creative writing professor in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University and a former distinguished professor at the City University of New York.

This event is cosponsored by The Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Creative Writing; The Princeton Public Library; and Labyrinth Books.

You may also like the following events from Labyrinth Books Princeton:

• Next Tuesday, 23rd September, 07:00 pm, Allison Daminger in conversation with Nancy Reddy—What's on Her Mind in Princeton
• Next Thursday, 25th September, 06:00 pm, Jane Hamilton in conversation with Laura Spence-Ash—The Phoebe Variations in Princeton
• This month, 30th September, 06:00 pm, The Althea Ward Clark Reading Series—Karen Russell and Jericho Brown in Princeton

Also check out other Arts events in Princeton, Literary Art events in Princeton.