In person Smith is softly spoken and polite, carefully crafting each response, though still standing out in the hotel where we meet, with their basketball shoes, nose rings and Whitney Houston T-shirt a hint of the performer that lies beneath. “It’s about saying ‘hello’ to the people of colour in the room, ‘let’s talk’.” “This book does not care about white people,” Smith says bluntly. because black boys can always be too loud to live.ĭon’t Call Us Dead was a collection that spoke truth to white power and made Smith a literary star.
you took one look at the river, plump with the body of boy after girl after sweet boi & ask why does it always have to be about race? … because Jordan boomed. i tried to love you, but you spent my brother’s funeral making plans for brunch, talking too loud next to his bones. The poem “dear white America” became a viral sensation, with Smith’s intense performance of it earning comparisons to “ Howl” – Allen Ginsberg’s exasperated condemnation of the US in the 1950s. It was a finalist for the National book award in the US, and at 29, Smith became the youngest ever winner of the Forward best collection prize, beating US poet laureate Tracy K Smith to take the top honour.
Smith’s 2014 debut, boy, marked the arrival of a new voice their 2017 collection Don’t Call Us Dead confronted issues that were raging in the US as the Black Lives Matter movement gained momentum, holding a mirror up to America’s racism and advocating urgently for change, while touching on Smith’s own HIV diagnosis. Danez Smith performs ‘dear white America’ in 2014.
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