Patricia Smith's The Intentions of Thunder a Finalist for the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry

'A bold re-imagining of the “new and selected” form where the poet enters into dialogue with her earlier poems, transforming a career retrospective into an engagement with earlier selves.' – Judges' citation, Pulitzer Prize in Poetry 2026

American poet Patricia Smith's retrospective The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems, first published in the USA in September 2025 by Scribner / Simon & Schuster, has been named one of two Finalists for the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.  Last year the US edition also won the National Book Award for Poetry 2025.

Bloodaxe Books is publishing The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems in the UK and Ireland on 21 May 2026, following on from publication of Patricia Smith's multi-award-winning Incendiary Art in 2019. The Bloodaxe edition is a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation for Summer 2026.

The Jury for the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry was Tracy K. Smith (Chair), J. Michael Martinez, Elizabeth Willis, Camille Dungy and D.A. Powell. 

'A bold re-imagining of the “new and selected” form where the poet enters into dialogue with her earlier poems, transforming a career retrospective into an engagement with earlier selves.' – Pulitzer Prize in Poetry 2026 Judges, on The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems

The Pulitzer Prize in Poetry is awarded to a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author. The 2026 winner was Ars Poeticas by Juliana Spahr (Wesleyan University Press), and the other Finalist was I Imagine I Been Science Fiction Always by Douglas Kearney (Wave Books).

The winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry was Marie Howe for her retrospective New and Selected Poems (W.W. Norton & Company, 2024), which was later published in the UK and Ireland by Bloodaxe Books under the title What the Earth Seemed to Say: New & Selected Poems.

Full details of the 2026 Pulitzer Prizes are here.

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NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY 2025

Patricia Smith's retrospective The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems, first published in the USA in September 2025 by Scribner / Simon & Schuster, won the prestigious National Book Award for Poetry 2025 in the US.

The Judges of the Poetry Award were: Kate Daniels, Terrance Hayes (Chair), H. Melt, Anis Mojgani and Caridad Moro-Gronlier.

National Book Award for Poetry, Judges' Citation:

'Patricia Smith's The Intentions of Thunder chronicles America's traditions, tragedies, and triumphs with steadfast invention. Every book since her groundbreaking debut has been a fusion of form and feeling. Her work redefines the relationship between spoken and written poetry. These new and selected poems are personal while communal; immediate while historical; demonstrative while sublime. In The Intentions of Thunder, language itself becomes weather — charged, clarifying, and resounding, a form of resurrection and survival.'

PATRICIA SMITH CONTRIBUTES TO RADIO 4 DOCUMENTARY THE BALLADS OF EMMETT TILL

Archive on 4: The Ballads of Emmett Till, BBC Radio 4, Saturday 13 June 2020, 8pm (first broadcast 25 August 2018)
 
On 13 June 2020, BBC Radio 4 rebroadcast this 2018 documentary about the lynching of Emmett Till in 1955.  The programme was presented and produced by the team who made the half-hour documentary about Patricia Smith that aired on Easter Sunday 2020. Recordings of Patricia Smith reading a number of poems from her most recent collection Incendiary Art (Triquarterly, USA, 2017; Bloodaxe Books, UK, 2019) were used, and Patricia contributed a comment near the end.

Presenter Maria Margaronis introduced Patricia Smith’s first poem by saying: ‘Emmett’s death has haunted generations of black Americans. It runs like a fault line through poet Patricia Smith’s 2017 collection Incendiary Art.’ 

Patricia Smith read the opening lines of the first poem in Incendiary Art, ‘That Chile Emmett in That Casket’ (at 4:38). She read the whole of ‘How to Bust into a Black Man’s House and Take a Boy Out’ (at 16:49), an extract from ‘Emmett Till: Choose Your Own Adventure’ (at 21:40), and another extract from ‘That Chile Emmett in That Casket’ (at 30:19).  Patricia comments near near the end of the programme (from 53:49):

‘We seem to be moving at a high rate of speed exactly backwards. It’s as unsafe to be African American now as it was for Emmett in Mississippi in 1955.’ – Patricia Smith (comment made in August 2018)

‘Emmett Till, 14 and black, was lynched in Mississippi on August 28 1955. Maria Margaronis travels through landscape and memory to explore stories around a black life that mattered.’

This feature is available to listen to via BBC Sounds here. Patricia Smith contributes at five points during the programme - details above.
 

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Patricia Smith: Live in Newcastle upon Tyne, 18 October 2019

Patricia Smith gave a brilliant reading from Incendiary Art  – followed by an interview with Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley – at NCLA (Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts) on 18th October 2019.

[06 May 2026]

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