Lady Smith

Winner of the 2023 Akron Poetry Prize Propulsive and erotic, searching and incisive, Jess Smith's debut collection Lady Smith explores the overlap between private and public violence. These poems investigate the troubled relationship between control and intimacy and deconstruct the messaging women receive about their bodies, starting in childhood. Lady Smith resists the urge to offer a tidy healing narrative, instead revealing the way victims absorb violence and try to live with the long shadows of cultural misunderstandings and self-doubt. Smith offers readers a fearless invitation to pleasure, sensuality, and our own complicity in everyday brutalities.