Maggie Smith (poet)

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Maggie Smith (* 1977 in Columbus , Ohio ) is an American poet , freelance writer and editor.

She lives in Bexley, Ohio. She achieved greater notoriety with her poem Good Bones , originally published in the American literary magazine Waxwing in June 2016, which was declared "Official Poem of the Year 2016" by PRI .

life and work

Smith graduated from Ohio Wesleay University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1999, and received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Ohio State University in 2003 . She is divorced and has two children.

From 2003 to 2004 she taught creative writing at Gettysburg College as a lecturer for aspiring writers. After several years of working in the publishing industry, including working as an editorial assistant for a children's book publisher, she decided in 2011, encouraged by a grant for creative writing from the National Endowment for the Arts , to switch to freelance work.

Smith published three volumes of poetry with small publishers. Her poems have been published in The Paris Review , The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, The Southern Review, Virgina Quarterly Review, and Shenandoah , among others . Her work has also found its way into many anthologies, including From the Other World: Poems in Memory of James Wright, The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror 2008, Apocalypse Now: Poems and Prose from the End of Days and The Helen Burns Anthology: New Voices from the Academy of American Poets University & College Prizes , Volume 9.

reception

Smith's central themes are the struggle for a love of the world despite its pain and dangers, the growth and decay in nature and the relationship between mother and child. These elements can also be found in her most famous poem, Good Bones . The poem describes a mother's struggle with the challenge of preparing a child for injustice, pain and cruelty in life without destroying the love for this difficult-to-love world - the lyrical self compares itself in this endeavor to a realtor who advertises the potential of a property in need of renovation and ends with the words "You could make this place beautiful", an invitation to both the broker's client, the child and the reader.

The publication of Good Bones in the literary magazine Waxwing took place three days after the attack in Orlando on June 12, 2016 , in which a mass murderer who shot 49 people in a nightclub. The disillusioned, but at the same time hopefully combative tone of the poem hit the national mood and spread quickly on Facebook and Twitter, where it was shared by Caitlin Moran , Alyssa Milano and Megan Mullally , among others . The poem's spread on social media took another spike in the days following the murder of Jo Cox and the 2016 US presidential election . On these occasions, too, Good Bones was one of the most frequently shared poems alongside Maya Angelous Still I Rise and W. H. Audens September 1, 1939 .

In 2017, Good Bones was recited in an episode of the American television series Madam Secretary named after the poem and performed by Meryl Streep at Lincoln Center .

Works

  • Good Bones ( Tupelo Press , Fall 2017)
  • The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison ( Tupelo Press , 2015) - awarded the Dorset Prize 2012
  • Lamp of the Body ( Red Hen Press , 2005) - honored with the Benjamin Saltman Award Poetry Award
  • Disasterology (Dream Horse Press, 2016) - Awarded the Dream Horse Press Chapbook Prize 2013
  • The List of Dangers ( Kent State University Press , 2010) - Winner of the Wick Poetry Series Chapbook Competition
  • Nesting Dolls (Pudding House, 2005)
  • Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity and Change (Atria / One Signal Publishers, 2020)

Prizes and awards

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Nora Krug: Maggie Smith and the poem that captured the mood of a tumultuous year . In: Washington Post . December 23, 2016 ( washingtonpost.com ).
  2. ↑ Lidia Jean Kott: This is the official poem of 2016 . In: Public Radio International , December 31, 2016. 
  3. ↑ a b c OWU Young Alumni Award, 2014 , accessed on May 7, 2019.
  4. ↑ a b Dear English Major Interview , accessed May 7, 2019.
  5. ↑ a b Maggie Smith Extended Bio , accessed May 8, 2019.
  6. ^ A b Sarah Appleton: Review: Good Bones by Maggie Smith . In: The Los Angelos Review . ( losangelesreview.org [accessed May 5, 2019]).
  7. ^ Katy Waldman: “Good Bones” Poet Maggie Smith on Watching Her Poem Go Viral in the Wake of the Orlando Shooting . June 17, 2016 ( slate.com ).
  8. ^ Dorset Prize Winners , accessed May 8, 2019.
  9. ↑ BSA Award Winners , accessed on May 8, 2019.
  10. ↑ Dream Horse Press , accessed May 8, 2019.
  11. ↑ Kent State University Press , accessed May 8, 2019.
  12. ↑ Writers' Corner , accessed May 8, 2019.
  13. ^ WOSU Public Media. ( Memento from February 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ). Retrieved May 8, 2019.
  14. ↑ Awardees , accessed May 8, 2019.
  15. ^ OAC Grant , accessed February 2015.
  16. ^ OAC Grant , accessed May 8, 2019.
  17. ↑ News. In: MaggieSmithPoet.com. December 19, 2014, accessed May 9, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Smith, Maggie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American poet, writer and editor
DATE OF BIRTH 1977
PLACE OF BIRTH Columbus , Ohio