Thomas R. Smith

Thomas R. Smith is an internationally published poet, essayist, editor, and teacher living in western Wisconsin. He worked as Robert Bly’s personal assistant from 1990 until the time of Bly’s death in 2022. He has edited three earlier books on Bly’s work, Walking Swiftly, Robert Bly in This World (with James P. Lenfestey), and Airmail: The Letters of Robert Bly and Tomas Tranströmer. His ten poetry collections include, most recently, Windy Day at Kabekona: New and Selected Prose Poems, Storm Island, and Medicine Year. He has also published a prose work, Poetry on the Side of Nature: Writing the Nature Poem as an Act of Survival. He teaches at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and posts poems and essays at www.thomasrsmithpoet.com.