Clint Smith
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Clint Smith is a writer, teacher, and doctoral candidate in Education at Harvard University with a concentration in Culture, Institutions, and Society. He is a recipient of the fellowships from the Art For Justice Fund, Cave Canem, the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, and the National Science Foundation with research interests that include mass incarceration, the sociology of race & racism, and the history of U.S. inequality.
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Previously, he taught high school English in Prince George’s County, Maryland where, in 2013, he was named the Christine D. Sarbanes Teacher of the Year by the Maryland Humanities Council. He has taught creative writing in state prisons throughout the Massachusetts Department of Corrections and currently teaches writing and literature in the D.C. Central Detention Facility.
Clint is a 2014 National Poetry Slam champion and a 2017 recipient of the Jerome J. Shestack Prize from the American Poetry Review. He was named to the 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 list as well as Ebony Magazine's 2017 Power 100 list. His two TED Talks, The Danger of Silence and How to Raise a Black Son in America, collectively have been viewed more than 6 million times. He is a weekly contributor to the podcast Pod Save the People and is co-host of the podcast Justice in America.
His essays, poems, and scholarly writing have been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, The Guardian, The Paris Review, the Harvard Educational Review and elsewhere. His first full-length collection of poetry, Counting Descent, was published by Write Bloody Publishing in 2016. It won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award, and was selected as the 2017 'One Book One New Orleans' book selection. His debut nonfiction book, "How the Word Is Passed" is forthcoming from Little, Brown.
Clint earned a BA in English from Davidson College and is an alumnus of the New Orleans Public School System. He lives in the greater Washington D.C. area with his wife, son, and daughter.
At this year’s Interscholastic Colloquium, our goal will be to engage as a community in the vibrant potential of this text in an interdisciplinary way. We will participate in active, collaborative online discussions through our blog, which will include resources both for teaching and for writing. We hope to encourage submissions in the fields of literary analysis; Race, Justice, and Equity Studies; social studies, film, theater, and creative writing.
Schedule
Click here for the full schedule of the 2020 DFW Colloquium.
Call For Papers
Submission Deadline: Friday, December 20, 2019
In 2016, Clint Smith published his first full-length collection of poetry, Counting Descent, which has captivated diverse audiences and inspired thoughtful discourse on identity, justice, and equity, especially with regard to race, mass incarceration, and education. On February 3, 2020, The Episcopal School of Dallas invites students and faculty of various schools to discuss his rich work. We encourage students to submit papers based on one of the prompts listed below. Students whose submissions are accepted will be invited to present their papers/projects in various workshops at the 2020 Interscholastic Colloquium.
Submission guidelines:
- Please submit papers in the form of a Word document (.doc or .docx);
- Video clips may be submitted via a link to the performance or film on YouTube.
- Follow MLA formatting guidelines, including a standard font (Times New Roman or Garamond), 12pt, 1” margins, and appropriate citations;
- To encourage blind evaluation, please do not include student name in the document header.
For 9th and 10th graders: we recommend papers should be 750-1000 words.
For 11th and 12th graders: we recommend papers should be 1000 to 1500 words.
Click Here to Submit
Prompts:
- Using one or more poems for inspiration, craft an original poem that utilizes the techniques Smith employs. To complement your work, please also submit a corresponding two-page formal reflection explaining (in detail, with specific examples) how you have modeled your poem on the example(s) you’ve chosen. Here are some areas to consider as you explore, evaluate, and emulate Smith’s work:
- Style
- Structure
- Form
- Language
- Tone
- Development (process)
- Content
- Craft a “golden shovel” poem for Smith’s “Canon” (44). Consider the structure of the poem you will create. How might you utilize this new poetic form to craft your own “argument” of sorts?
- Introduction to the golden shovel technique
- Brooks's "We Real Cool"
- Hayes's "The Golden Shovel"
- Clint Smith’s written works are textured, layered, and rich with meaning. So, too, is his spoken word poetry. View the following spoken word poems written and performed by Clint Smith:
- Clint Smith on PBS: Why we shouldn't forget that past US presidents owned slaves
- Clint Smith: How to raise a black son in America
- Welcome to the mines from They Go to Die: Clint Smith spoken word
As you think about writing and expressing something deeply meaningful to you and your experiences/thoughts/beliefs, consider crafting a performance poem that utilizes cadence and rhythm, plays on words and words from play, sound and silence in a deliberate art form. You will submit a written copy of this poem as well as a video clip of your performance (YouTube link). Please note that the performance should be no longer than four minutes. Information about Spoken Word Poetry (Poetry Foundation definition).
- Student Alex Smith crafted an original short to add visual texture to Clint Smith’s poem “Playground Elegy.” Selecting one of Smith’s poems from the Counting Descent collection, create your own original short that utilizes your narration of the poem combined with a visual complement to the piece. Your original creation should be no longer than 4 minutes and submitted via a link to YouTube.
- Explore Smith’s craft as a poet. In doing so, consider how he honors traditional poetic conventions as well as how he modernizes them; how he reveals the power of language and utilizes juxtaposition and imagery to convey purpose and theme.
- Study these additional Clint Smith poems not in Counting Descent. Then, explore how these poems, stylistically and thematically, connect to this collection.
- Poem and Discussion "What is Left"
- Your National Anthem (poem)
- Additional poetry published by Clint Smith
- Consider pairing one of Smith’s poems from the collection with the poem of another poet, canonical or contemporary. While the following list of poems is merely a suggestion of where to begin, feel free to select your own poem for the purpose of meaningful comparison with analysis and evaluation.
- "A Small Needful Fact" by Ross Gay
- "Riddle" by Jericho Brown; “The Tradition”
- "Let America be America Again" by Langston Hughes ; "Theme for English B"
- Reading and listening to Clint Smith’s words about James Baldwin and his “A Talk to Teachers,” consider how Clint Smith explores racial identity, particularly as it pertains to youth--students--in his collection Counting Descent. Based upon your exploration and evaluation, what should “critically responsive” education look like, and what must teachers and students do to create such?
- Why James Baldwin's 'A Talk to Teachers' Remains Relevant 54 Years Later
- Clint Smith on Baldwin in The New Yorker
- James Baldwin's A Talk to Teachers
- In an interview exploring the interplay between “protest, art, and protest-art,” Clint Smith opined: “Art, I think, is inherently a protest of some sort. The role of the writer is to operate in the space of the imaginative, and thus it demands a rejection of the world as it is and movement toward what it might otherwise be.” What is the “protest” inherent in this collection--and for what possible world do Smith’s poems advocate? Drawing upon specific poems, explore how Smith uses his writing as truth-telling and/or truth-seeking; consider bringing in additional, related research to support your inquiry and evaluation.
- In his TED talk entitled The Danger of Silence, Smith calls for students and teachers to speak their truth. Using his talk as inspiration, craft your own oration not to “[tell] people the things they [want] to hear,” but “instead...the things they [need] to.” Imagining that there is “a microphone tucked under [your] tongue, a stage on the underside of [your] inhibition,” cease your silence as you deliver, poetically and deliberately, your own truth. (Video; No longer than 4 minutes).
- Consider how Smith unifies Counting Descent as a collection. Feel free to discuss and evaluate voice, form, theme, motif, language, purpose, or anything else you find significant when examining the arc of the collection (as well as the relationship between and among the poems) as a whole.
- Evaluating the framework of the collection, consider how “Counting Descent” (pages 21-22) is the ideal title poem for the collection and, further, how “There is a Lake Here” serves as the ideal resolution to this collection? How might you evaluate the significance of these two pieces as they relate to and connect with other poems in the collection?
- Compare/contrast Clint Smith’s exploration and depiction of identity in Counting Descent to the treatment of that quality in another work of literature that you’ve read recently, whether novel, short story, or poem.
- Peruse--and then read closely--the following collections. Selecting one for further inquiry, evaluate the texts, resources, and ethos of the collection as a whole. Then, connect some aspect of this collection to that of Clint Smith’s. What do you notice? Of what do you despair? How does this resource, in conversation with Clint Smith’s, contribute to your understanding of systemic racism and injustice?
- 1619 Project
- https://eji.org/bryan-stevenson/
