Visiting Artist’s Talk – Rommi Smith

For this week's Visiting Artist's Talk we welcome Rommi Smith, a playwright, poet, vocalist and academic based in Leeds.

Dr Rommi Smith is winner of the Northern Writers Award for poetry.

Rommi is a curator and interlocutor of visual art, collaborating with other creatives to produce bespoke, participatory experiences in galleries. She curated ‘Changing the Story: photographs of British Life in Black and White’ (1917-1962) and the ‘Temples to These Women’ series, a response to Sonia Boyce’s Venice Biennale award-winning exhibition, ‘Feeling Her Way.’ In 2023, ‘Forever? ‘Smith’s choral work in collaboration with composer Roderick Williams received its world premiere. Their latest work, ‘Cusp’, premieres at the Southbank Centre, London, in May.

Rommi has contributed to BBC radio programmes including ‘The Verb’, ‘Front Row’; and her essay ‘Poetry Please’ about Vaughan Williams’ ‘The Lark Ascending’ is part of the Radio 3 series, The Essay.

Rommi has a doctorate in English. Her academic writing is published by New York University Press and Routledge. She is a Cave Canem Fellow and winner of residencies and commissions from institutions ranging from the British Council to the BBC. She is the inaugural British Parliamentary Writer-in-Residence, the inaugural Poet-in-Residence for Keats’ House in Hampstead, London, and the 2022 Poet-in-Residence at the Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere. In 2024, Rommi is a Visiting Fellow in Music at the Open University.

About the Visiting Artists’ Talks series

The Visiting Artist’s Talk (VAT) series hosts talks by an exciting range of arts practitioners from around the world every Monday afternoon from 2 to 4pm during teaching weeks.

All of our talks are compulsory for our Fine Art students but are also open to anyone else who would like to join us.

For more information, please email Nick Thurston.

Directions to Chemistry Lecture Theatre B

See the campus map for location of the Chemistry building.

Go through the Chemistry main entrance, turn right, follow the corridor round to the left, go through the double doors and the lift and stairs are both immediately on your right.

Either go up 1.5 flights of stairs to an upper landing and Chemistry Lecture Theatre B is at the end of the landing on your right or take the lift to the 2nd floor, turn left upon exiting and Chemistry Lecture Theatre B is at the end of the landing on your right.

Image

Rommi Smith, ‘A Response to the Wisdom Tree’. Photo courtesy JMA.