Selected by Kimiko Hahn as a winner of the 2012 Dorset Prize, Maggie Smith’s poems question whether the realms of imagination and story can possibly be safe.This house at the end of the street isn’t all that it appears to be, as Smith’s verses design a dark mythical landscape hidden between the picket fences. In “The List of Dangers”, she writes, “The sun was a saw blade,/a yellow circle with teeth. Terrible birds with plumage/of fire scorched whatever they touched: The black/mailbox opened its mouth to the black street”. This is a world unwelcome to the children that play in it, whether they know it or not. The vivid imagery and colors of any old neighborhood fill the pages with life, giving Smith’s work an ominous relatability. Her stories leave us grasping at who said what and, more importantly, where the line between fairy tale and horror story really lies.

Maggie Smith’s previous books are The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison (Tupelo 2015), Lamp of the Body (Red Hen 2005), and three prizewinning chapbooks. Smith is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation, among others.

Her poem “Good Bones” has gone viral—tweeted and translated across the world, featured on the TV drama Madam Secretary, and called the “Official Poem of 2016” by Public Radio International, earning news coverage in the Washington Post, Slate, the Guardian, and beyond. Maggie Smith was named the 2016 Ohio Poet of the Year.