Writer, artist and punk icon Patti Smith said she always felt “very romantic” about her hometown of Chicago, and can recite lines from Carl Sandburg’s “Chicago” poem by heart.
“It’s where I made my first steps, where I said my first words, and where I was baptized,” Smith said in an interview. “I just always felt proud to be born in Chicago.”
Born at Grant Hospital in Lincoln Park on Dec. 30, 1946, Smith spent her early years in Logan Square. She remembers playing with Polish immigrant children and seeing her first swan in Humboldt Park.
Smith will be returning here on Sept. 10 to receive the Harold Washington Literary Award at the Union League Club. Past recipients include Stuart Dybek and Sandra Cisneros. Then on Sept. 20, Smith and her band will perform at Riot Fest for the first time since 2021.
Smith said she was “very surprised” to receive the Washington prize, though she had received the 2010 National Book Award for her memoir “Just Kids,” along with many musical accolades.
“It’s been very encouraging, because the most important pursuit to me is writing,” Smith said. She started performing her poetry in the 1970s, and “because of my intense energy, my performances kept growing and growing, eventually merging with rock and roll. It was never a plan of mine, never even a dream of mine. And it did send me on an entirely different sort of public mission. But in the end, writing has always been my first love.”
Smith’s books include “M Train” and “Year of the Monkey,” as well as her more recent memoir “Bread of Angels,” which dives deeply into her childhood, artistic career and marriage to MC5 guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith. She tells of early encounters with art – such as listening to Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” and seeing a Picasso for the first time. She also writes of Fred’s sudden death at age 46, followed by the loss of her brother Todd at 42.
Smith said if the book has a theme, it’s gratitude.
“All through my life, I’ve met many extraordinary people who have helped me along the way and mentored me or shepherded me. … I had to endure the shock and sorrow of losing people, but every one of them, I was grateful to,” Smith said.
She recalled how her parents coped with poverty and her severe childhood illnesses, including tuberculosis and scarlet fever. The memoir includes amazing details – such as when Patti was late to school because she was communing with an old and regal snapping turtle.
Asked how she can remember childhood so well, Smith said, “I think because I never left it. I mean, it’s really, truthfully, the most precious time in my life.” She was close in age with Todd and her sister Linda, and they loved retelling stories together.
Approaching 80, Smith said she feels lucky to be alive. But she is concerned about the damage done by the Trump administration and believes climate change should be the world’s “No. 1 preoccupation.”
During her recent visit with Pope Leo, Smith said they spoke about the state of the world and about one’s responsibility, especially to young people. They also talked baseball – he is famously a Sox fan, while she roots for the Cubs. “So we laughed about that.” She called Leo one of Chicago’s “most exemplary citizens.”
“I’m not Catholic, but I have great faith in him and respect him as one of our most important global voices,” she said.
Chicago-born Patti Smith is the winner of this year’s Harold Washington Literary Award
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Smith said that it’s always been tough to be an artist. Ludwig van Beethoven faced humiliation – William Blake died in poverty. But if artists have something to say, they’ll find a way to say it, and there’s plenty to respond to in the present moment, Smith said.
“Part of the package of being an artist or an activist is always a degree of suffering, of being trampled upon and then rising up again. It’s not easy…” Smith said. “All anybody can do, really, is the best you can.”
“I know what it’s like to feel despair,” Smith said. “I felt it a number of times.” But then she takes a deep breath and thinks, “I don’t want to be here. I want to actively do what I can to get to another level. But it takes work… I work every day.”
Mary Wisniewski is a freelance writer.