US poet laureate starts rural reading tour in New Mexico
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The U.S. poet laureate has embarked on the first of several trips to bring her poetry to rural pockets of the country where she says book festivals rarely take her.
A tour of New Mexico marks Pulitzer Prize-winner Tracy K. Smith’s first trip as part of a project she’s launched in her role as the nation’s 22nd poet laureate. Her tour began Thursday evening with a reading at Cannon Air Force Base outside Clovis, an agricultural town on the far eastern plains of New Mexico.
On Friday afternoon, she visits the Santa Fe Indian School, where students from tribal communities across New Mexico and much of the United State board in dormitories and can take classes in Native American history, tribal languages and tribal government and as well as algebra, English and science. While Santa Fe itself is a cultural capital of the Southwest, many of the school’s students hail from underserved communities on rural reservations.
Smith, 45, has not previously spent time in Native American communities.