Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this interview. 

Princeton professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and author Tracy K. Smith is America's poet laureate.   

In her role as the 22nd poet laureate, a position selected by the Librarian of Congress, she is required to conduct just a few specific duties during her one year appointment. For Smith, the freedom of time will give her an opportunity to do what she most desires: To visit less-traveled parts of the country and try to connect with people. 

"What I'm hoping to do is take poetry readings and poets and the conversation around literature, to places that are not always author's spots on a book tour or locations for book festivals," says Smith.  

Her hopes, she says, is that the power of poetry can help people process some of the heavier issues in the country at this time.

Ieshia Evans stands before policemen in riot gear in Baton Rouge, LA July 9, 2016

(Jonathan Bachman for Reuters/Flickr)

The below poem by Tracy K. Smith, "Unrest in Baton Rouge," is about the above image and was initially commissioned by WNYC's Studio 360 in November 2016. You can hear their full episode featuring that poem here. 

Our bodies run with ink dark blood.
Blood pools in the pavement’s seams.

Is it strange to say love is a language
Few practice, but all, or near all speak?

Even the men in black armor, the ones
Jangling handcuffs and keys, what else

Are they so buffered against, if not love’s blade
Sizing up the heart’s familiar meat?

We watch and grieve. We sleep, stir, eat.
Love: the heart sliced open, gutted, clean.

Love: naked almost in the everlasting street,
Skirt lifted by a different kind of breeze.