Wildness Symposium: Patricia Smith

I am not going to lie I was not very excited to go to the wildness symposium and listen to a poet but I came away very surprised. There is a huge difference between reading the poems yourself and having the actual poet read them to you. Patricia Smith captured the attention of everyone in the room by the way she read. She emphasized some words, said some words softly, and used a lot of different voices. Ms. Smith did this all while coming off of a cold. After every poem she would have to cough and take a sip of her drink.
When she was first introduced it was quite a long introduction due to all of the awards she has won and I can see why. She was a four time Poetry Slam champion and was on the HBO series Def Poetry Jam.
A few poems really stuck out to me on the day. The first one was about the dog Luther B. When she read this she used her New Orleans voice and it seemed like it was really her dog. We did find out before the poem though that she is not even a dog person. The next one was the one where 32 people died in the nursing home. The reason this one stuck out was because it was so long. My favorite one though was the last one she read. Ms. Smith read “Siblings” on page 75 in Blood Dazzler. It talks about all of the hurricanes that happened during the year and how they do not speak of Katrina.