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Frederick Smock
Frederick Smock was a Kentucky poet laureate, a literary journal editor and a Bellarmine University professor whose straightforward poetry lyrically evoked the natural world.
“As soon as I met Fred Smock, then a graduate student at the University of Louisville, I knew I was in the company of a special and wonderful sensibility,” said Sena Jeter Naslund, a Hall of Fame novelist and former Kentucky poet laureate who was his teacher at UofL. “To have seen his journey as a distinguished poet, trailblazing editor and splendid teacher has been both comforting and inspiring.”
Naslund said the Louisville Review, a magazine she founded in 1976, and her Fleur-de-Lis Press now run a triennial contest in Smock’s memory. The Frederick Smock Poetry Prize is a first-book prize for Kentucky writers that includes book publication and a $1,000 award. The winner will be announced in March.
“As poet laureate, Fred’s intent was to bring poetry to as broad an audience as possible, and he did that by simply reading and talking about poems, and reminding listeners of the joy in sound, rhythm and rhyme that we have as children,” George Ella Lyon, another former Kentucky poet laureate and Hall of Fame member, said after Smock’s death at age 68 in 2022.
Smock was born in Louisville on June 23, 1954. When he was 6, his physician father moved the family to suburban Fern Creek, where he often spent time wandering forests and fields. “I am drawn to nature,” he once said.
After graduating from Seneca High School, Smock earned a bachelor’s degree at Georgetown College and his Master of Arts at UofL. He did post-graduate study at the University of Arizona.
From 1985-98, Smock and Sallie Bingham, the late writer and philanthropist, co-edited The American Voice, a literary journal. Smock later joined Bellarmine University, teaching English and creative writing.
Smock’s 11 collections of poetry included Gardencourt (Larkspur Press, 1997), The Good Life (Larkspur Press, 2000), Guest House (Larkspur Press, 2003), The Blue Hour (Larkspur Press, 2010) and The Bounteous World (Broadstone Books, 2013). He also wrote two books of prose, two collections of essays and a memoir.
He published in many prominent literary journals, including The Southern Review, The Iowa Review, The Hudson Review, Poetry East, Ars Interpres (Sweden), The Georgetown Review and Olivier (Argentina).
Smock received the 2005 Wilson Wyatt Faculty Award at Bellarmine University, the Al Smith Fellowship in Poetry from the Kentucky Arts Council, and the Jim Wayne Miller Prize for Poetry from Western Kentucky University.
Smock died of heart-related issues on July 17, 2022. He is survived by two sons, Ben and Sam Smock.