Ron Smith (U.S.)

Ron Smith is an American poet and academic.

Life
Born in Savannah, Georgia, Smith moved to Richmond, Virginia, to play college football (some of his poems are about sports). He holds degrees (B.A., M.A., M.H., M.F.A.) from the University of Richmond and Virginia Commonwealth University in philosophy, English, general humanities, and creative writing. He has studied creative writing at Bennington College in Vermont, British drama at Worcester College, Oxford University, and Renaissance and modern culture and literature at the Ezra Pound Center for Literature in Meran, Italy.

He has taught creative writing (poetry, fiction, drama), twentieth century American poetry, and the life and works of Edgar Allan Poe at Mary Washington College, Virginia Commonwealth University, and the University of Richmond.

Smith is the current Writer in Residence at St. Christopher's School in Richmond.

He is the author of Running Again in Hollywood Cemetery and Moon Road. Smith's poems have appeared in periodicals, including The Nation, Kenyon Review, New England Review, and in anthologies from Wesleyan University Press, Time-Life Books, University of Virginia Press, University of Georgia Press, and University of Illinois Press.

His essay-reviews have appeared in The Kenyon Review and other magazines and reference works, most recently in The Georgia Review, Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts, and H-Arete. He is the regular poetry reviewer for The Richmond Times-Dispatch.

He is a former president of the Poetry Society of Virginia. Smith is a trustee for the Edgar Allan Poe Museum and sits on the board of directors for James River Writers.

Poetry
Its Ghostly Workshop. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2013.
 * Running Again in Hollywood Cemetery. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1988. ISBN 978-0-8130-0881-3
 * "To Ithaca" (18-poem sequence). The Georgia Review, Summer 2002.
 * Moon Road: Poems 1986-2005. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-8071-3271-5

Recognition
Together with Elizabeth Seydel Morgan, he was one of the first two winners of the Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize, given to poets associated with central Virginia. He is now one of the "curators" of the prize.

His collection Running Again in Hollywood Cemetery was called "a close second" by Margaret Atwood, judge for the National Poetry Series Open Competition; also a runner-up for the Samuel French Morse Prize. The title poem was awarded Southern Poetry Review's Guy Owen Award by judge Linda Pastanlater;

Awards
Other awards and honors include:


 * Theodore Roethke Poetry Prize from the Poetry Northwest
 * Guy Owen Poetry Prize
 * Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellowship