[3] Smith's poems have appeared in literary journals across the country, including Ploughshares, Antioch Review, Callaloo, Transition, River Styx, and Quiddity.

[6] About A Mandala of Hands, Terrance Hayes, a winner of the National Book Award for Poetry, has written: "John Warner Smith’s terrific debut collection pays homage to histories near and far, familial and mythic.

"[7] About Soul Be A Witness, Thomas Sayers Ellis, winner of the 2005 Whiting Award, wrote: "This is how you upright Richard Wright.

Redressed as courageous and urgent contemporary command, Soul Be A Witness carefully balances and re-injects the nutrient-like echoes of the Black Literary Tradition into our current state of soft, staged, formal phony literary legacy––as Heroic savior text and Neo Blue Print for New Black Fighting.

"[8] Smith was appointed by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities and governor John Bel Edwards to serve as the State's Poet Laureate.

[11] In November 2019, Smith memorialized a violent racial incident in the state's history by appearing at a historical symposium and debuting a new poem about the events.