Clint Smith, poetry

Clint Smith is a 23 year-old poet, edu­ca­tor, and activist from New Orleans, LA. He is a 2010 grad­u­ate of David­son Col­lege where he majored in Eng­lish and founded Free­Word, Davidson’s first and only slam poetry team. In 2010, he led the team to a top ten fin­ish at the Col­lege Unions Poetry Slam Invi­ta­tional, the pre­mier national com­pe­ti­tion for col­lege stu­dents. Upon grad­u­at­ing from David­son, Clint lived in Soweto, South Africa work­ing to edu­cate youth in the town­ship on HIV/AIDS by engag­ing them in sport and spo­ken word.

He cur­rently teaches high school Eng­lish in Wash­ing­ton D.C. as a Teach For Amer­ica corps mem­ber. He is the 2012 Graf­fiti DC Grand Slam Cham­pion and is a mem­ber of the 2012 Belt­way Poetry Team, rep­re­sent­ing DC at the National Poetry Slam. Addi­tion­ally, Clint has served as a cul­tural ambas­sador to Swazi­land on behalf of the U.S. State Depart­ment, con­duct­ing poetry work­shops with youth through­out the coun­try focused on HIV/AIDS pre­ven­tion and self-empowerment.

He has per­formed his work at slams, uni­ver­si­ties, work­shops, and poetry fes­ti­vals through­out the United States and across South­ern Africa, win­ning mul­ti­ple com­pe­ti­tions and hav­ing his work pub­lished in sev­eral lit­er­ary jour­nals. 

Clint believes that slam poetry presents and impor­tant plat­form to dis­cuss a vari­ety of impor­tant issues in our soci­ety. “While spo­ken word cer­tainly doesn’t always have to be socially or polit­i­cally ori­ented,” he says “it does pro­vide a unique oppor­tu­nity to tell the sto­ries of those who are not given a voice. It can also give insight into the human expe­ri­ence by con­tex­tu­al­iz­ing each of our lives rel­a­tive to those around us. It’s a dynamic art­form that chal­lenges or per­cep­tions and con­tin­u­ously allows us to think out­side of our­selves. I’m grate­ful to be a part of some­thing that has the poten­tial to be a trans­for­ma­tive in how peo­ple per­ceive the world around them.”

Aside from poetry, Clint loves his mom, soc­cer, scrab­ble, libraries, play­ing Xbox late at night with his room­mates, doc­u­men­taries, being chased by his lit­tle cousins, pre­tend­ing he knows how to play the piano, and the feel­ing you have right after you eat way too many bar­beque ribs.

He can be reached a cwardsmith@gmail.com.