Canadian Poets Series #12 : Pete Smith

A transatlantic poet, Pete Smith is an Anglo-Canadian who has lived more than half his life in Canada. He lives with his artist wife, Lyn Richards, in Kamloops, British Columbia/ Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc, on the unceded traditional lands of the Secwépemc, the Secwépemcúl'ecw.

Smith has had individual poems short-listed for the Montreal International Poetry Prize (2015), Malahat Review Open Season Award (2017) and Arc Poem of the Year Contest (2023). His first chapbooks were published in Ireland by Wild Honey Press (20-20 Vision and cross of green hollow), and in England by Poetical Histories (Harm's Length) and Oystercatcher Press (Odden I Sing). In Canada, Kamloops Poets' Factory published John's Book of Alleged Dances. above/ground press has published four of his chapbooks: Strumof Unseen (2008), A New Love/An Aching Stone (2016) [a sort of cento made of alternate lines by Mahmoud Darwish & Yehuda Amichai], Sing . . . Despite (2019), Some Failed Eternity (2024).

Some of Smith's translations from Osip Mandelstam's poems from the winter of 1933-34 have appeared in SNOW lit rev 9 & 10. Poems and sequences have been published in Baron Samedi, W, Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, Tinfish, dANDelion, Famous Reporter, Touch the Donkey (as well as an interview), periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics, G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] #23, and elsewhere. Poems and sequences can also be found on-line at Great Works, Alterran Poetry Assemblage, Fortnightly Review, and Otoliths.

Smith's 2015 publication from Shearsman Books, Bindings with Discords, collects six long poem sequences and was reviewed under the rubric, "No idea what he's on about, but I fuckin' like it", at Stride, and listed in Dusie by rob mclennan as one of the best Canadian poetry books of 2015. Several anthologies and festschrifts have included poems by Pete Smith, including: April Eye: poems for Peter Riley (2000); A Meeting For Douglas Oliver and 27 Uncollected Poems (2002); Rocksalt: An Anthology Of Contemporary BC Poetry (Mother Tongue Publishing 2008); and Sea Pie: a Shearsman anthology of Oystercatcher poetry (2012).

Pete Smith began contributing reviews and essays to literary magazines with "The Rorschach Bunker," on W.D. Snodgrass for Agenda in 1996. and he subsequently became a regular reviewer for The Gig between 1998 and 2008. Smith produced longer essays on the work of such writers as Barry MacSweeney, Trevor Joyce, Sharon Thesen and Jennifer Moxley for The Paper, Crayon, The Capilano Review, and jacket, as well as the final chapter of The Salt Companion to John James.

He was interviewed by Nate Dorward in The Fly on the Page for The Gig Documents, and his interview of Lissa Wolsak appeared in Six Poets: Views & Interviews (The Gig Documents). The latter interview was also included in Lissa Wolsak's Squeezed Light: Collected Poems 1994-2005. Readings of note include Café Rouge, Cambridge 1998, the Cambridge Conference of Contemporary Poetry, 2006, and two occasions at the Kootenay School of Writing. In the early 2000s Smith presented Viva-Voce, a weekly poetry radio show in Kamloops BC.

Smith worked for 40 years with intellectually disabled people and those who supported them, seeing his role largely as a translator for individuals who often could not adequately express their thoughts and needs. He aligns with no specific school of writing, and romanticizes being a lone wolf but, in truth, is perhaps more of a lone Chihuahua.