“In a City You Will Never Visit,” the newest published work by Eastern Kentucky University professor Young Smith, collects poetry that threads together two long sequences, a suicide story and a metaphysical meditation on light, among other individual poems.

“There is an arrestingly ethereal quality to Young Smith’s poems as they navigate their numinous territory, where things that once seemed most familiar are revealed to be least controllable and comprehensible,” said award-winning poet J. Allyn Rosser.

Boston University professor and poet Rosanna Warren said, “Young Smith has composed a subtle, intelligent, spare book with the cleanliness of good prose.”

Smith, who joined the EKU faculty in 2003, has taught Creative Non-Fiction, Poetry, Fiction, Playwriting, Advanced Composition, Survey of World Literature, Honors Composition, and Freshman Composition II, along with a graduate course in Literary Adaptation, among other courses.

Smith earned his bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Georgia in 1985, a master’s in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Arkansas in 1990 and his doctorate in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston in 2003.

Smith has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the James A. Michener Foundation, and the Kennedy Arts Council, as well as a Tennessee Williams Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers Conference. His work has appeared in “Poetry,” “Beloit Poetry Journal,” “The Iowa Review,” “Crazyhorse,” on the Poetry Daily Web site, and in other publications.

The book is available on Amazon.com and through the California Institute of Arts and Letters (www.calartsandletters.org).