William Jay Smith
(b. 1918)

William Jay Smith, poet, translator, and teacher, has had a distinguished literary career. He has written more than 50 books of poetry, children's verse, literary criticism, translation, and memoirs and has edited several poetry anthologies. He has translated the poetry of French, Russian, Hungarian, and Swedish poets.

Smith was born in Winnfield, Louisiana. He grew up on an army base outside St. Louis, Missouri, where his father was a clarinet player in the army band. Because his father was never transferred, Smith spent his entire childhood there. His memoir Army Brat (1980) focuses on that period of his life.

Smith earned a B.A. and an M.A. in French Literature at Washington University, did graduate work at Columbia University and at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. Smith was the United States Poet Laureate (then known as poetry consultant to the Library of Congress) from 1968 to 1970.

Smith has written poetry for many audiences and has written in many different poetic forms. He drew upon his Native American heritage–he is part Choctaw–for The Cherokee Lottery: A Sequence of Poems (2000). He has written numerous volumes of rhymes and riddles for children, including Laughing Time: Nonsense Poems (1955) and Around My Room and Other Poems (1969). Other collections include Celebration at Dark (1950), American Primitive (1957), The Tin Can (1966), The Traveler's Tree (1980), and The World Below the Window: Poems 1937–1997 (1998).

Smith was a poet in residence at Williams College from 1959 to 1967 and Chairman of the Writing Division of the School of Arts at Columbia University from 1973 until 1975. Smith keeps two homes–one in Cummington, Massachusetts and the other in Paris, France.

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