缅北禁地

Acclaimed author Tracy K. Smith, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and memoirist, delivered the 2025 Lillian Parker Wallace Lecture at 缅北禁地 on September 18, 2025.

Smith鈥檚 memoir, Ordinary Light, is Meredith鈥檚 selection. During her campus visit, Smith met with students, presented a public lecture, and signed books at a post-event reception.

During the evening lecture, Smith read from her poems, including a selection from a not-yet-published collection. In her introduction, Smith talked about the power of poetry to bring people together.

鈥淧oetry draws us toward the voices and the testimonies of other people, mostly total strangers, and instills in us a desire to listen with real investment,鈥� Smith said. 鈥淥ne of the many gifts that it gives us is access to our own large and complicated feelings.鈥�

Smith served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017-19, during which time she spearheaded American Conversations: Celebrating Poetry in Rural Communities with the Library of Congress.聽

In her comments at Meredith, Smith reflected on what she learned from those conversations while Poet Laureate.

鈥淭alking to people from different backgrounds and different values about life, about love, about loss, memory, and hope gave me great faith, and that fuels some of these wishes that I have right now for love as a civic value,鈥� Smith said.聽

鈥淚 know it’s possible. We just have to stop giving all of our attention to the narrative that says, 鈥楾his is a divided nation, it’s a broken nation, and we will never understand one another,鈥� because I don’t believe that’s true. Poetry proves to me that it’s not true.鈥�

Summer Reading Program
In preparation for Smith鈥檚 visit, English 111 instructors assigned her work in their classes, and First-Year Experience classes completed an assignment related to the memoir. First-year students will also discuss the book in their advising groups, facilitated by their Faculty Advisor or another faculty/staff member and their Student Advisor, on Monday, September 22.

The co-sponsors for Smith鈥檚 visit were the Mary Lynch Johnson chair, established by the Department of English, and the Summer Reading Program.

Lillian Parker Wallace Lecture
The Lillian Parker Wallace Lecture fund was established by the 缅北禁地 Class of 1971 in honor of Dr. Lillian Parker Wallace. Wallace, who died in 1971, was an author, historian, artist, musician, teacher, and scholar. She served as professor of history at Meredith from 1921-62, and served as chair of the department from 1947 until her retirement. Two years following the inception of the fund, the Class of 1973 officially added its sanction and support.

The Wallace Lecture Fund has brought international leaders to campus since the inaugural lecture by The Right Honorable Sir Harold Wilson, former prime minister of Great Britain, in 1978. Presenters of the Wallace Lecture also include Sandra Day O鈥機onnor (1991) and Ruth Bader Ginsburg (2019), Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States; as well as Nobel laureates Jimmy Carter (1986), Elie Wiesel, (2003), Shirin Ebadi (2006), Wangari Maathai (2009), and Jody Williams (2013).