Tracy K. Smith Named Harvard Arts Medalist

Tracy K. Smith ’94, poet laureate of the United States, will receive the Harvard Arts Medal during the opening ceremony of Arts First (May 2-5), the University’s annual celebration of student, faculty, and community art-making featuring more than 100 performers. Smith won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for her collection Life on Mars; she is known for her lyrical, meditative poems. Her most recent collection, Wade in the Water (2018), is her most political. Smith’s involvement in the Dark Room Collective, a haven for black poetry in the 1980s and ’90s, was described in this magazine’s March-April 2016 issue. 

The Arts Medal is awarded each year to a “Harvard or Radcliffe graduate or faculty member who has achieved excellence in the arts and has made a contribution through the arts to education or the public good.” Last year’s recipient was novelist Colson Whitehead ’91.