Rommi Smith is an award-winning poet, playwright, theatre-maker, performer and librettist. A three-time BBC Writer-in-residence, she is the inaugural British Parliamentary Writer-in-Residence and inaugural Poet-in-Residence for Keats’ House, Hampstead. A Visiting Scholar at City University New York (CUNY), she has presented her research and writing at institutions including: The Segal Theatre, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and City College New York. Rommi’s performance at The Schwerner Writers’ Series in New York was at the invitation of Tyehimba Jess, Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry. Rommi is a Doctor of Philosophy in English and Theatre.
Her academic writing was first published by New York University Press as part of the groundbreaking book Imagining Queer Methods (2019). She is recipient of a Hedgebrook Fellowship (USA) and is a winner of The Northern Writers’ Prize for Poetry 2019 (chosen by the poet Don Paterson). She was recently awarded a Cave Canem fellowship in the USA. Rommi is a Sphinx30 playwright: a programme of professional mentoring for – and by – contemporary women playwrights, led by Sphinx Theatre. Rommi is writer-in-residence for TopFoto, the UK’s leading photographic archive, and a forthcoming poet-in-residence for the Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere.
