Lytton Smith

Professor of Poetry
Welles 230
smithlj@geneseo.edu

Lytton Smith received his Ph.D. and M.F.A. from Columbia University and has been a member of the Geneseo faculty since 2014. He courses typically focus on the craft and social role of poetry, including Ecopoetics and Justice, Poetry and the Border, and 20th/21st Century Black Poetry Books.

He is the author of five published poetry collections including The Square (New Michigan Press, 2021), While You Were Approaching the Spectacle But Before You Were Transformed By It (Nightboat Books, 2013) and The All-Purpose Magical Tent (Nightboat Books, 2009). In addition to publishing his own work, he has also translated twelve novels and works of nonfiction from the Icelandic. He is a 2019 recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship.

 

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Photo of Lytton Smith

Classes

  • CMRD 101: Rdg: Artificial Intelligence

    This course requires students to read and analyze a book selected as the year’s “common reading.” Course assignments connect with other curricular and co-curricular learning opportunities and require weekly brief responses or applications of the reading.

  • ENGL 201: Foundations of Creative Wrtg

    An intermediate-level writing workshop involving assignments in various literary forms. Class discussions will focus on student work as well as work by published authors.

  • ENGL 301: Wrtg Poet: I, Eyes, & Aisles

    A practical course in the writing of poetry, using student assignments in the genre as a central means in discussions both in class sessions and individual conferences with the instructor.