We hope everyone is staying happy and healthy for this finals season! Only another week until we’re done with the semester. Who else is looking forward to summer? But if you need a little study break before you get there, check out this week’s spotlight author, suggested by our very own Christin Snyder!

United States Poet Laureate, Tracy K. Smith, is this week’s featured poet. She has captivated us with her collections Life on Mars and Wade in the Water. The former brilliantly works as an elegy to her father, a scientist who worked on the Hubble Telescope. She addresses themes of fatherhood in relation to daughterhood, as well as race. Smith’s writing also seems to act as a sort of love song to Sci-Fi filmography, mentioning films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and often using the speaker’s voice as a camera lens in these poems. In her newest collection Wade in the Water, Smith discusses history and the present concurrently, linking them together with a focus on identity. She examines what it means to belong; to be a mother and a citizen in a society run by men, money, and violence.

Click on the video below to watch the poet herself reading the titular piece from her collection Wade in the Water. Enjoy!

For a transcript of Wade in the Water, or to explore her other works, follow this link: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/wade-water