[1][2] Smith is co-editor of The Selected Letters of Robert Creeley, along with Kaplan Harris and Peter Baker (University of California Press, 2014).
After Rod Smith moved to Washington, D.C., in 1987, he became part of the DC poetry community which included the writers Tina Darragh, Lynne Dreyer, P. Inman, Doug Lang, Joan Retallack, Phyllis Rosenzweig, and others.
This group expanded over the years to include such writers as Leslie Bumstead, Jean Donnelly, Buck Downs, Cathy Eisenhower, Heather Fuller, Mark McMorris, Carol Mirakove, Maureen Thorson, Ryan Walker, Mel Nichols, Tom Orange, and Mark Wallace.
Smith’s own poetry is written, as Lisa Jarnot writes, “With the sweeping vision of Whitman, the noun-play of Gertrude Stein, and the slant political commentary of the New York School”.
[3] While at Bick's and as a founding curator with Buck Downs, Joe Ross, and Sylvana Straw of the DCAC "In Your Ear" series he organized readings for Charles Bernstein, Cage, Kevin Davies, Carolyn Forche, Bob Perelman, Tom Raworth, Leslie Scalapino, Diane Ward, and others.