Patrica Smith Poetry Reading

Patricia Smith started off her poetry reading with a poem that she says she reads before every reading. It was a poem about a class of students she had in a southern school (Florida I believe but I'm not sure) and more specifically about a little girl whose mother had recently died. This little girl asked Smith to help her write a poem so she could remember her mother. The message of this poem, Smith said, was that her and other poets had the power of creating memory and closure with words. After this poem she started reading from Blood Dazzler. She began with poems personifying Tropical Depression 12, Tropical Storm Katrina, and Hurricane Katrina.
She then went on to explain how she got her inspiration for many of the Poems in Blood Dazzler. Her husband, who is affiliated with the Associated Press, brought home pictures which could not be posted in newspapers for graphic or other reasons. One of those pictures contained a dog which was suspended on a power line. This picture, Smith said, was the basis for the series of poems contained in Blood Dazzler about the dog Luther B. Smith read all of these poems before continuing on to the piece with 34 stanzas about the men and women who drowned in the nursing home. Patrica then went on to read about Ethel, the woman who died in her wheelchair outside of the Superdome and was left there for three days. Her final poem was about the other storms of 2005, ending with the title of the book, Blood Dazzler.