Reflections on race and slavery surface throughout her work, alongside meditations on desire, loss and the eternal. Smith was born in Massachusetts and raised in Fairfield, California, by an engineer father and a schoolteacher mother who both grew up in Alabama during the civil rights era. Last month, Smith, 47, published Eternity, a selection of work from her four books of poetry to date, beginning with The Body’s Question in 2003 and including the Pulitzer prize-winning Life on Mars (2011), which explored sci-fi, astrophysics and the celestial nature of David Bowie. Her second and final term has just ended – she will be succeeded by the Native American poet Joy Harjo – but she has plenty to discuss with Kay about the satisfactions and scarier aspects of the job. Tracy K Smith is the 22nd poet laureate of the United States and the fourth woman of colour to occupy the role. Luckily this makar, the third since the position was established by the Scottish parliament in 2004, has found time to meet up in the lobby of a Manchester hotel, prior to an appearance at the city’s literary festival, and compare notes with another eminent national bard.

I’d give them this line to do and that commission, because there isn’t really enough of you to do everything you’re asked. “T here are so many things that you get asked to do,” says Jackie Kay of her role as makar, or poet laureate of Scotland, “that you think, God, wouldn’t it be great to be one of those artists who have 10 or 15 people working for them and they all make this huge big painting? I’d love to have mini-makars.

Red Dust Road by Jackie Kay