Patricia Smith is a legendary force, an inspiration of imagination and spirit. The author of eight poetry collections, including Incendiary Art (Northwestern University Press, 2017), winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the 2017 Los Angeles Times Book Award in poetry, and Blood Dazzler (Coffee House Press, 2008), which was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award in poetry, Smith is also a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam. She is a distinguished professor for the City University of New York and a visiting professor at Princeton University. She lives in Howell, New Jersey.

In her new book, Unshuttered, published in February by TriQuarterly Books, an imprint of Northwestern University Press, she explores the lives of late-nineteenth-century African Americans who posed for what was at the time an extraordinary event—a photograph. Over a century later, the few moments they spent in front of a blinking aperture are the basis for Smith’s timeless collection of verse. In these persona poems, titled solely by number and accompanied by gleaming sepia images of brown faces from previous decades and generations, Smith digs deep into our national subconscious to discover the potential of narratives previously unconsidered and disregarded.

Through our conversation, we unearthed the roots of her fascination with this time period and ended up with queries that were personal and riveting. These poems spring from old suitcases, a search for belonging, deep personal loss, an obsession for old images, an exploration in pedagogy, and a quest to fill in the gaps of history with imaginings of what so easily might have been.

You have been collecting old photographs for years now. How did that start?

Well, I started [going] out