A
poet and literary scholar, Dale Martin Smith was born in Dallas, Texas.
He earned a BA and PhD in English from the University of Texas, and an MA in
Poetics from New College of California. He is the author of the full-length
poetry collections Slow Poetry in America (2014), Black Stone
(2007), and American Rambler (2000). A new collection, Flying Red
Horse, will be published by Talonbooks in fall 2021.
In a recent editorial, Kim Dorman notes that Smith’s “poems are
auto-biographical; personal, yet universal. They are permeated with history and
geography; socially aware and impassioned. At the same time, they can be quiet,
even tender. Dale weaves textures of culture and memory that explore and
question the experience of being alive in a volatile world.”
Smith’s scholarly contributions include Poets Beyond the Barricade:
Rhetoric, Citizenship, and Dissent after 1960 (2012) and two edited
editions, An Open Map: The Correspondence of Robert Duncan and Charles Olson
and Imagining Persons: Robert Duncan’s Lectures on Charles Olson
(both 2017), for which he received Simon Fraser University’s Charles Olson
Award. His essays and poetry have appeared in Poetry, The Walrus,
LA Review of Books, Boston Review, and Lambda Literary.
With Hoa Nguyen, he edited Skanky Possum, a literary zine and book imprint,
1998–2004. Smith joined the faculty of English at Ryerson University, Toronto,
in 2011.
www.ryerson.ca/english/about-us/…culty/smith-dale/
Interview with Dale Smith conducted January 21, 2021.