Loading Events
Virtual Event
Event Categories:

,

Maggie Smith: A SUIT OR A SUITCASE

Thu, March 26 from 6:30 pm - 7:30 pm PDT

$25

The Literary Arts Bookstore is thrilled to welcome poet Maggie Smith to celebrate her latest collection of poetry, A Suit Or a Suitcase: Poems!

Tickets are required for this event and can be purchased below. All tickets include a copy of A Suit Or a Suitcase.


About the book:

Instant New York Times bestselling author and poet Maggie Smith returns with a new collection of poems on the sometimes-blurry distinction between mind and body, and how the self shifts and moves through time and space. The title of Maggie Smith’s new collection comes from the eponymous poem:

 

You ask what I’ll miss about this life.
Everything but cruelty, I think.

 

But you want one specific thing,
so here—I’ll miss my body. I’ll miss

 

its companionship, how it’s traveled
with me, never leaving me—& by me,

 

I mean my mind. My soul? My self?
I don’t know what to call it, and besides,

 

my body hasn’t traveled with me.
I’ve traveled inside it. Do I wear it

 

or does it carry me? Is the body a suit
or a suitcase?

 

Within, poems turn over the strange relationships between the body and the mind, the self and the world. With her signature tenderness and clarity of observation, and with stunning swoops of imagination, Smith considers—and reconsiders—what it is to be human: Does one life matter in the grand scheme of space and time? How can it be that we are the same people we were ten, twenty, or thirty years ago, but also different people? And could there be more to life, just beyond the borders of we can experience? Each poem is an ode to the power of our minds and proof that both a life and a self, whether within a suit or a suitcase, is infinitely expandable.

Tickets

The numbers below include tickets for this event already in your cart. Clicking "Get Tickets" will allow you to edit any existing attendee information as well as change ticket quantities.
Maggie Smith: A Suit or a Suitcase
Tickets required for entry in to the event. All tickets include a copy of 'A Suit or a Suitcase: Poems' by Maggie Smith. Books will be available to pick up at the event.
$ 25.00
15 available
Maggie Smith

Maggie Smith

Maggie Smith is the award-winning New York Times bestselling author of nine books of poetry and prose, including A Suit or a SuitcaseDear WriterYou Could Make This Place BeautifulGood BonesGoldenrod, Keep Moving, and My Thoughts Have Wings. A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Smith has also received a Pushcart Prize, and numerous grants and awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has been widely published, appearing in The New YorkerThe Paris ReviewThe Nation, The New York TimesThe AtlanticThe Best American Poetry, and more. You can find her on social media @MaggieSmithPoet.

Read more
February 6, 2026
Mac Barnett in conversation with Carson Ellis (SOLD OUT)
February 12, 2026
Portland Arts & Lectures 2025–26: Imani Perry
February 20, 2026
LitMic presents: LOVE IS MURDER
March 12, 2026
Everybody Reads 2026: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson
March 26, 2026
Maggie Smith: A SUIT OR A SUITCASE
April 14, 2026
Planet Money: Live
April 20, 2026
2026 Oregon Book Awards Ceremony
April 23, 2026
Portland Arts & Lectures 2025–26: Patrick Radden Keefe
April 30, 2026
Verselandia! Youth Poetry Slam Championship 2026