DALE MARTIN SMITH The Size of Paradise
2025 GRIFFIN POETRY PRIZE FINALIST
There is a wound the size of paradise.
"With a kind of clipped historical shorthand, the use of the fragment in The Size of Paradise becomes a supercharged lyrical force that is also sprung with time. The momentum of this capacious book-length sequence keeps turning outward as it investigates an inward subjectivity, not all together Dale Smith per se, but maybe a collective interiority where we find, “Dead things collect in words.” And more importantly we discover “There will be love as memory.” Smith has written a high-stakes recounting of time and experience expanding the world we live within and that lives within us. This book is out of doors. I love it." --PETER GIZZI, author of Fierce Elegy
The new full-length collection from the author of Sons, Flying Red Horse, and Blur
There was a story. There was a time.
There was a distinct sense of measure.
There was a heat. But never calm. Messiness.
Wide oak. How plastic lids exhale carbon.
DALE MARTIN SMITH
The Size of Paradise
Poetry. ISBN: 978-1-989355-65-7
Cover: Kirby
Design/layout: r. kolewe
Printed by John De Jesus at Coach House (Toronto).
Booksellers, Libraries, US/International Sales:
Distributed by Asterism Books
Poet and literary scholar, DALE MARTIN SMITH was born in Dallas, Texas. He earned a BA and PhD in English from the University of Texas, and an MA in Poetics from New College of California. He is the author of the full-length poetry collections Flying Red Horse (2021), Slow Poetry in America (2014), Black Stone (2007), American Rambler (2000), as well as the KFB chapbooks, Sons (2017), and Blur (2022). Smith’s scholarly contributions include Poets Beyond the Barricade: Rhetoric, Citizenship, and Dissent after 1960 (2012) and two edited editions, An Open Map: The Correspondence of Robert Duncan and Charles Olson and Imagining Persons: Robert Duncan’s Lectures on Charles Olson (both 2017), for which he received Simon Fraser University’s Charles Olson Award. His essays and poetry have appeared in Poetry, The Walrus, LA Review of Books, Boston Review, and Lambda Literary. With Hoa Nguyen, he edited Skanky Possum, a literary zine and book imprint, 1998-2004. Smith joined the faculty of English at Toronto Metropolitan University, in 2011. He is currently at work on an essay collection, That Tongue Be Time on the poetry and prosody of Norma Cole (2025).