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Patricia Smith is a poet,
playwright, journalist,

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performer, and musician.

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She is a four-time
National Poetry Slam

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individual champion.

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And in 1997 she tied with Jimmy
Santiago Baca for the Taos

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Poetry Circus World
Heavyweight Champion

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for Poetry in what organizers
have called the bout's most

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controversial decision.

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She collaborates with
musicians and filmmakers.

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Has been on tour
with Lollapalooza

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and has appeared on the
HBO series Def Poetry Jam.

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She co-wrote
Africans in America,

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a chronicle of slavery
in the United States

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and a companion to the four-part
PBS series of the same name.

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Smith is the author of
three books of poetry, Life

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According to Motown, Big Towns,
Big Talk, and Close to Death.

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She is currently at work on a
biography of Harriet Tubman,

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Fixed on a Furious Star, and a
children's book, [? Aunt and ?]

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Girl.

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In her poetry, Patricia Smith
makes a case for complexity,

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not obfuscation but
precise observation.

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The complicated paradox
of our human condition.

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The Library of Congress
uses the curious subject

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heading "social problems
poetry" in cataloging Big

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Towns, Big Talk.

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I do make the case that in
her unflinching persona poems

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and riffs on current events
and tabloid headlines,

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Smith exposes the
single faceted narrative

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as one of our foremost
social problems.

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With poems that
speak in the voice

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of a prostitute or a
pedophile, from the perspective

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of a man who holds a hospital
staff at gunpoint because they

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refuse to disconnect his
dying son's life support,

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or a mother who kills
in the courtroom

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the man who raped her daughter.

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In these poems, Patricia
Smith's subverts our identity

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and subjects our moral
core to question,

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and she does it with
style, with sonic twists

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and rhythmic patterns and talks.

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She puts the muse
back into music.

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Please welcome Patricia Smith.

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[APPLAUSE]

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