Gordon Mitchell Smith Member Member since 2017

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Area Poet

Fiction Poetry Nonfiction

Gordon Mitchell Smith is a poet, fictioneer, and NYU MFA student whose writing appears in Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Palette Poetry, and elsewhere. An excerpt of his unpublished debut novel has been praised by The New England Review and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Paul Harding at Ploughshares. His depression occasionally shuts down his brain and leaves him catatonic for months on end, which sucks, so go easy on him. But he lives in Queens with his cat Joni Mitchell Smith, which is great.

Photo is Gordon holding an umbrella depicting Monet's Water Lilies. He is 40-ish, male, white.

Location:: Queens, NY
Birthdate:: 16 April
Social:: Blog/web

Gordon Mitchell Smith's Publication History

Sep 2020

Columbia Poetry Review published The Apocalypse Survivor Masturbates

Sep 2020

Columbia Poetry Review published The Apocalypse Survivor Recalls Having Forgotten

Sep 2020

Columbia Poetry Review published The Apocalypse Survivor Burns Yet Another House...

Oct 2011

The Los Angeles Review published War Hero

Interview with Gordon Mitchell Smith

How do you celebrate your successes, such as acceptances? How do you handle rejections and other setbacks?

I don't celebrate anything. (Don't do this.) I dispassionately log rejections and get back to shit that actually matters. (Do this.)

Where do you find inspiration?

If you're not finding inspiration in every single sensory experience, then your inspiration detector needs adjusting.

What advice would you give to a young, budding writer (or artist) with less experience than yourself?

Set and stick to a writing schedule, even if it's brief, but the longer the better. Work only improves with practice.

For your first draft (or sketch), do you prefer analog or digital tools, or a mix?

Whatever tool is most accessible in the moment: Moleskine, Microsoft Word laptop app, or Evernote mobile app. Medium often has a significant influence on poems, such as use of much longer lines in Word, whereas handwriting or UI constraints force line breaks sooner.

Do you incorporate generative AI/LLMs into your creative process? If so, how?

Absofuckinglutely never.

"One of the most dehumanizing effects of AI is the short cuts it offers through the gaps and impasses intrinsic to the act of writing." — Dan Chiassion, here: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/06/25/think-for-yourself-ai-dan-chiasson/

Are you an unreliable narrator?

Koan: There's no "you" to begin with, so what do "you" think about the "narrator's" reliability?

Last Updated: 15 Sep 2026