Patti Smith Presented by Seattle Arts & Lectures

Songwriter/punk rocker/poet Patti Smith blazed onto the rock scene in the 1970s with the seminal album Horses. She had nine additional releases becoming known as the Godmother of Punk and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. Writing in the New York Times last year, Terrence Rafferty referred to Smith as a passionate autodidact whose idiosyncratic style is a kind of homemade concoction of Bob Dylan [with whom she has performed], William Blake, Arthur Rimbaud, Allen Ginsberg, Little Richard and Buddha In addition to her musical career, Smith is a visual artist and a writer. She has written poetry for decades, including The Coral Sea, a book of prose poems written after the death of longtime friend, the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe; her most recent collection is Auguries of Innocence. She has completed a memoir, Just Kids, about her relationship with Mapplethorpe, to be released shortly before her event with SAL, which will include a reading of her poetry and memoir, Q&A, and end with a few songs.