I met Kathy at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in the fall of 2011, as I was writing poems for my second book, The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, but was also beginning to write poems that didn’t quite belong in that manuscript. There are countless pieces of art that have changed my life-changed me-but one that comes immediately to mind is this crankie by Katherine Fahey, an artist based in Baltimore. What is a piece of art that changed your life? I have my parents’ entire record collection in my house now, and many of the albums are terribly scratched from so much love over the years, but I can still listen to some of them. My first ideas about poetry were probably born from music, listening to my parents’ record collection and repeating lines to myself: “Cellophane flowers of yellow and green / Towering over your head” and “Wordlessly watching, he waits by the window and wonders / At the empty place inside” and “Because a vision softly creeping / Left its seeds while I was sleeping.” I would listen to these records and write down the lyrics I heard (or misheard). Over the past few days, I’ve welled up or gotten goosebumps or had an “oof” moment thanks to many things: songs by Fruit Bats, Andy Shauf, and Widowspeak episodes of Mae Martin’s terrific series Feel Good on Netflix Elissa Altman’s memoir Motherland and a beautiful conversation with Rhett Miller (with poems and songs!) celebrating the launch of Goldenrod. It’s probably not a surprise to people who know my work that I’m moved easily and often. Her new poetry collection, Goldenrod, will be published later this month. She has been widely published, appearing in the New York Times, The New Yorker, the Paris Review, The Best American Poetry, among others. A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Smith has also received several Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council, two Academy of American Poets Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Maggie Smithis the award-winning author of Good Bones, The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, Lamp of the Body, and the national bestseller Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change. During this extraordinary moment in time, we asked writers, musicians, curators, and innovators to reflect on influence, memory, language, shared spaces, and the power of poetry to bring us together.

Maggie smith poet keep moving