I’m happy when I’ve got a little project. I like making things.

I’ve always been a watcher, and I think about what I’ve seen. Sometimes this results in an object. Sometimes I try to get at it with words.  When I’m lucky, something will take my thinking—take me—to a new place and I get to see what’s in the weeds.

At times, there’s no thinking, there’s just looking, and lauding, and that becomes the project.

Recently, I’ve been collaborating with the  composer and jazz musician, Paul Finley, to create duets using prose and piano: words and music in conversation, another way to get at it and another happy project.

Recent Works

THEY’RE GOING TO MAKE IT

 THEY'RE GOING TO MAKE IT lost and found in Mexico Vanessa suggested. I accepted. Even though I knew better. Or should have. A Resort & Spa in Cabo San Lucas where lightly larded men pace azure pools waving cocktails, whooping S-class…

TOMMY’S RATS

The Old Woman Tries to Make Herself Useful The old joke about Tommy was she was a social scientist without the social. Now she’s gone feral. She watches herself with detached interest, as though she were a subject in one of the studies she…

A Duet for Prose and Piano
Paul Finley & Patricia Smith
Photo Courtesy Paul Joseph Brown

Words by Patricia Smith
Original music by Paul Finley

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