FANWOOD, NJ – The Carriage House Poetry Series invites the public to attend a free reading by the internationally acclaimed poet, Patricia Smith, on Tuesday, June 21. The event will take place at 8 p.m. in the Kuran Arts Center on Watson Road, off North Martine Avenue, adjacent to Fanwood Borough Hall (GPS use 75 N.
Martine Avenue).
Chicago native Patricia Smith, a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam, is the most successful poet in the competition’s history. She is the author of five books of poetry, including “Blood Dazzler,” a book of poems chronicling the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, which was a 2008 National Book Award finalist and one of NPR's and Library Journal's Top Books of 2008; and “Teahouse of the Almighty,”voted Best Poetry Book of 2006 on About.com and winner of the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award and the 2007 Paterson Poetry Prize. Coffee House Press will publish her new work, “Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah,”in
2012.
Ms. Smith is a Pushcart Prize winner and her work has appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, TriQuarterly, Tin House and many other journals, and will appear in “Best American Poetry 2011”and “Best American Essays 2011.” She has performed around the world, including at Carnegie Hall, the Poets Stage in Stockholm, Rotterdam’s Poetry International, the Aran Islands International Poetry and Prose Festival, the Bahia Festival, the Schomburg Center, the Sorbonne in Paris and on tour in Germany, Austria and Holland.
In addition to her poetry, Ms. Smith authored the groundbreaking history, “Africans in America,”and a children’s book, “Janna and the Kings,” winner of a Lee & Low Books New Voices Award. During a ceremony at the Gwendolyn Brooks Center of Chicago State University in 2006, she was inducted into the National Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent. Currently a professor at the City University of New York/College of Staten Island, Ms. Smith also teaches for Cave Canem and in the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine.
The Carriage House Poetry Series is in its thirteenth year at the Patricia Kuran Arts Center, an historic Gothic Revival structure that was once a 19th century carriage house, hence the name of the series. The June 21st reading is free and open to the public. An open mic will follow the featured performance. The series
will adjourn for the summer and will resume in September.
For more information call 908-889-7223 or 908-889-5298. For online directions and information, visit http://carriagehousepoetryseries.blogspot.com/.
