English poet Caroline Smith will visit Red Bank Regional High Schoo to discuss and read her latest literary work “The Immigration Handbook”, a collection of poems about refugee and immigration issues based on her experiences as a parliamentary district immigration case worker in England.
According to Red Bank High administrators, the event will take place on Sept. 19 from 1 to 2:30 p.m.
Born in Illford, England, Smith originally trained as a sculptor at Goldsmiths College, University of London, according to a press release from publisher Seren. Her first published work was “Edith,” a 30-page narrative poem about a woman haunted by a secret from her life before World War II.
Smith, according to district administrators, has published several works, including “The Thistles of the Hesperides,” which was shortlisted for the Aldeburgh Festival. “The Thistles of the Hesperides” was her first poetry collection and depicted the community of West Pilton, Scotland, where she lived in the 1980s, according to the press release.
The work she will be discussing at Red Bank High, “The Immigration Handbook,” is her latest collection and provides a depiction of immigrants and the bureaucrats responsible for their future. According to the press release, the characters include a Russian boxer in hiding, a nurse facing deportation for a petty crime and Brazilian cleaner who still hears the sound of the forests near her home being cut down.
“The Immigation Handbook” has been shortlisted for the 2016 Ted Hughes Award for new work in poetry and has also received praise from Alf Dubs, a Czech-born English politician who was among the 669 children saved from the Holocaust by Nicholas Winton in 1938, according to the press release.
“[Smith] never allows the reader to forget that behind the refugee statistics, there are suffering human beings, very often the victims of a seemingly insensitive and overstretched bureaucracy,” Dubbs said in the press release. “These poems are very moving and it’s hard to do justice to the way Caroline Smith conveys the anxieties, hopes and disappointments experienced by immigrants.”
According to district administrators, Smith has been published in many poetry journals. She has given readings at many locations, including Barnard College, New York City, and the Sudbury Arts Festival and Grasmere for the Wordsworth Trust. Smith was a recipient of the Eastern Arts Writers Bursary and won two awards at the Troubadour Poetry Competition.
Smith’s visit was made possible by Rik Van Hemmen, a Red Bank High alumnus, engineer and personal friend of Smith, who came to the United States as an immigrant in the 1970s. Van Hemmen believed the high school would be an appropriate and appreciative venue to welcome Smith, according to district administrators.
“I am delighted to be giving this seminar at Red Bank Regional High School where I will be reading from my latest collection of poems, ‘The Immigration Handbook’,” Smith said. “I love it when young people become enthusiastic about poetry and literature. It can open up to them a completely new way of seeing the world.
“I’m really looking forward to the discussion with the students at Red Bank High,” she said. “They are the generation that increasingly will have to deal with the issues of refugees and migration of people around the world that I write about in my book.”