“Dare to Believe” is back this month. We are featuring two African American literary talents. Tracy K. Smith is a celebrated poet and educator, and Gil Scott Herron was a jazz poet, singer, musician, and author known for his spoken-word performances in the 1970s and 80s. They exemplify creativity and talent in poetry, education, and music.

Tracy K. Smith is a poet and educator. She served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United Staes from 2017-2019.

Smith was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts in 1972 and raised in Fairfield, California. Her family has deep roots in Alabama. Smith’s dad was an engineer who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope, and her mother was a teacher.

Smith developed an interest in poetry from reading Emily Dickinson and Mark Twain in elementary school.

In fifth grade she shared a short poem she wrote with her teacher who encouraged her to continue writing and studying poetry. Smith received her B.A. from Harvard University. While in Cambridge, she joined the Dark Room Collective. In 1997, she earned an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Columbia University. From 1997-1999, she was a Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford University.

Smith taught at Medgar Evers  College of the City University of New York, the University of Pittsburgh, and Columbia University. In 2006, she joined the faculty of Princeton University. In 2019, she became the Chair of Princeton’s Lewis Center for the Arts.

She also taught summer sessions at Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College in 2011, 2012, and 2014. In 2014, she was the Robert Frost Chair of Literature.

From 2018 to 2020, Smith hosted the podcast and radio program, The Slowdown.

In 2021, she joined the faculty of English and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. She’s a Susan S, and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at Harvard-Radcliffe Institute. In 2024 Smith received a Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative arts in the field of Poetry.

She has published five collections of poetry. In 2011, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her collection, Life on Mars. Her memoir, Ordinary Light, was published in 2015.

Smith is married to the author and educator, Raphael Allison. They have three children.

Gil Scott Heron (1949-2011) was born in Chicago, Illinois. His mother was an opera singer and his father, Gil Heron was a Jamaican footballer nicknamed “The Black Arrow.” He became the first black man to play for Celtic F.C. in Glasgow, Scotland.

Heron’s parents separated when he was a young child. He was  sent to live with his maternal grandmother in Jackson, Tennessee. When Heron was twelve, she died and her went to live with his mother in the Bronx in New York City. After impressing the head of the English Department at The Fieldstone School with a sample of his writing, Heron was offered a full scholarship to the prestigious school. He was one of only five Black students in the entire school. Heron was well aware of the socioeconomic gap between him and his classmates and made no attempt to hide it or pretend it didn’t bother him.

After graduation, he decided to attend Lincoln University in Oxford, Pennsylvania, the alma mater of Langston Hughes one of his important literary influences. He met Brian Jackson at the university, and they formed the band, Black & Blues.

Heron left school to write two novels while honing his musical skills. He embraced the Black Arts Movement (BAM). His first book, Vulture was published in 1970 to positive reviews. Heron never completed his undergraduate degree, but based on his body od work, he was admitted to the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and received an M.A. in creative writing in 1972. He taught literature and creative writing for several years at the University of the District Of Columbia in Washington, D.C. while maintaining his musical career.

Heron fused blues, soul, and jazz with lyrics about social and political issues of the times. His  vocal stylings were a combination of rapping and melisma (the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between different notes in succession). He coined the term “bluesologist” to describe someone like himself who studied the origins of the blues in a scientific manner.

His poem “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” became a major influence on hip hop music.

Heron was arrested and imprisoned twice for drug possession. He struggled with addiction later in life.

During his life, Heron authored five books, recorded 32 albums (18 studio albums, 8 live albums, and 6 compilation albums). He was also a musical guest on Saturday Night Live in 1975.

Photo of Gil Scott Heron mural:

By photo by Alex Lozupone, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33946428