The Blaney Lecture

The Blaney Lecture on contemporary poetry and poetics is offered annually by a prominent poet. Past lectures have been given by Elizabeth Alexander, Richard Blanco, Anne Carson, Carolyn Forché, Joy Harjo, Terrance Hayes, Susan Howe, Adrian Matejka, Sharon Olds, Alicia Ostriker, and Claudia Rankine. The lecture was created in memory of former Academy of American Poets Board member Dr. Dorothy Gulbenkian Blaney, past president of Cedar Crest College and champion of women and education, by a gift from her estate.

On Thursday, March 23, 2023, Academy Chancellor Patricia Smith delivered the 2023 Blaney Lecture, “The Scrawny Little Black Girl with the Hasty Pigtails Sounds Out ‘Anemone’.”

Patricia Smith is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Unshuttered (Northwestern University Press, 2023); 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 a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry; Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah (Coffee House Press, 2012), winner of the 2013 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; and Blood Dazzler (Coffee House Press, 2008), a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award. She is a winner of the Poetry Foundation’s 2021 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement. In January 2023, Smith was elected to become a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Past Blaney Lectures

Patricia Smith, The Scrawny Little Black Girl with the Hasty Pigtails Sounds Out ‘Anemone,’ 2023