Lytton Smith

[a] poet of visionary intensity and bedeviled diction — Terrance Hayes

Foundlings books by Lytton Smith:

• My Radar Data Knows Its Thing

• Foundlings Vol. II
  

Lytton Smith is the author of two books of poetry from Nightboat Books and the translator of several books from the Icelandic. Kevin Young selected Smith’s Monster Theory for the Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship in 2008, and Terrance Hayes selected The All-Purpose Magical Tent for the Nightboat Books Poetry Prize in 2009. Smith’s most recent full-length work is While You Were Approaching the Spectacle But Before You Were Transformed by It (Nightboat Books, 2013). The novel Öræfi—the Wastelands, from the Icelandic of Ófeigur Sigurðsson, was published by Deep Vellum in spring 2018. Smith received his Ph.D. and M.F.A. from Columbia University, and has taught at Columbia University and Plymouth University in the southwest of England. He is now Assistant Professor at SUNY Geneseo, where he is a member of the Creative Writing and Black Studies faculties.

Praise for Lytton Smith:

Lytton Smith shows one of the directions contemporary poetry should be headed. — David Herd

Though he knows so much, because he knows so much, being so restlessly at study, Lytton Smith can’t help but celebrate seeing. — Fred Moten

Lytton Smith’s work opens a space for breath and inquiry in between the spectacle and its consequences [...] (gorgeously) records borders rather than insisting communication can abolish them. — Laura Mullen

Keep your eyes peeled for this poet — Kevin Young