Tracy K. Smith follows a long line of prominent African American woman poets that started with Phillis Wheatley in colonial America. She is the fourth Black woman to serve as US poet laureate after Gwendolyn Brooks, Rita Dove, and Natasha Trethewey.

While an undergraduate student at Harvard, Smith joined the Dark Room Collective. Harvard undergraduates started this group in 1988 as a tribute to essayist James Baldwin. The group’s name came from the photography darkroom where literature by Black authors was once stored in the Harvard library. The Dark Room Collective was a space where up-and-coming and prominent Black writers could showcase their work. The reading series paired older writers with younger ones. The collective closed in 1998.

Smith is a highly lauded contemporary poet in the United States. Her writing touches on racial issues, identity, sexuality, and science fiction. She taught poetry writing to the next generation of American poets at prestigious universities. As such, Smith has a strong influence on the landscape of 21st-century American poetry.

The New Yorker published “Declaration” at the start of her tenure as US poet laureate in October 2017. This poem was a mission statement for her role as laureate in a period of political and social turmoil that continues today.