The female writers who inspire Patti Smith
When Patti Smith began her career in music, she owed everything to her love of literature. The punk poet had been enamoured with certain writers from an early age, treating William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience like a Bible and coveting Arthur Rimbaud like an unrequited lover.
When she was in her early 20s, Smith moved to New York to discover the big city, with its endless opportunities and underground venues full of eccentric and era-defining artists. She soon met Robert Mapplethorpe, who became her soulmate and muse. They were just kids, as she posits in her memoir, attempting to navigate a landscape full of poverty, art, and danger.
She performed her poems in front of audiences in bars across the city, making a name for herself as an impressive literary talent. However, Smith’s decision to perform with a guitar backing her compelling words allowed her to make a name for herself in New York’s burgeoning punk scene. The poet formed the Patti Smith Group and started releasing singles before her groundbreaking 1975 album Horses, a record which put her on the map as one of the most important figures in rock music.
Yet, Smith wouldn’t have been able to hone such a fluid and impressive writing style if not for the writers she was constantly studying, whose stories took her across the globe, through the ages, and into the minds of people from different social and cultural backgrounds. Although Smith has cited many diverse figures as sources of inspiration, we can’t ignore the women whose work, imbued with an honest understanding of the female experience, also shaped Smith, who has inspired countless women in her wake.
Smith has cited the Brontë sisters as a huge source of inspiration, particularly the books Wuthering Heights by the middle sister, Emily, and Villette by the eldest, Charlotte. The musician even performed an intimate gig at the Brontë’s Old Schoolroom in Haworth, a building where they used to teach, just a stone’s throw from the house they once lived in.
Another Yorkshire-centric literary interest of Smith’s is Sylvia Plath. While she was born and raised in America, Plath lived for some time and tragically died in England. Her resting place is located in Heptonstall, a short distance from Hebden Bridge, where Smith has also performed with the poet in mind. She loves her poetry collections Winter Trees and Ariel, receiving the latter when she was 20.
“Ariel became the book of my life then, drawing me to a poet with hair worthy of a Breck commercial and the incisive observational powers of a female surgeon cutting out her own heart. With little effort I visualised my Ariel perfectly. Slim, with faded black cloth, that I opened in my mind, noting my youthful signature on the cream endpaper. I turned the pages, revisiting the shape of each poem,” she once said via Radical Reads.
Smith has also cited women like Susan Sontag, Virginia Woolf, Mary Shelley, Louisa May Alcott, and Anna Kavan as inspirations. Their works—including children’s literature, science fiction, and cultural analysis—shaped her view of the world.
