Incendiary Art

Patricia Smith is renowned as both a page and stage poet. She is a four-time individual champion of America’s National Poetry Slam, the most successful poet in the competition’s history. She gave readings at festivals in Newcastle and Cork in 2018, and will launch Incendiary Art at events in April 2019 at Cúirt International Festival of Literature in Galway, Southbank Centre in London, and other venues to be confirmed.

Powerful, visionary book by leading African American poet confronts tyranny against the black male body and the tenacious grief of the mothers of murdered African American men. Dynamic sequences, including a compelling chronicle of the devastating murder of Emmett Till, serve as a backdrop for present-day racial calamities and calls for resistance.Incendiary Art confronts the tyranny against the black male body and the tenacious grief of the mothers of murdered African American men. Dynamic sequences, including a compelling chronicle of the devastating murder of Emmett Till, serve as a backdrop for present-day racial calamities and calls for resistance. With impassioned eloquence and a sharpened focus on incidents of national mayhem and mourning, Patricia Smith reinvents the role of witness with an incendiary fusion of forms, including prose poems, ghazals, sestinas, and sonnets. This phenomenal, visionary book addresses what is frightening, and what is revelatory, about history now. Winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and 2018 NAACP Image Award, Incendiary Art was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize and 2018 Los Angeles Times Book Prize.