In
March at Tweetspeak Poetry, I
had a series of articles on the poetry collections nominated for the National
Book Critics Circle Award. One of those collections was Citizen:
An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine,
a series of prose poems on what it means to be Black in contemporary America.
 |
| Claudia Rankine |
Citizen won the
National Book Critics Circle Award for best poetry collection. Monday night in
London, Citizen was also selected as the
winner of the Forward Poetry Prize for best poetry collection. The prizes
kick off the London Literary Festival, which goes on for two weeks and includes
readings, lectures, book signings, and other literary events.
Rankine’s
work is powerful. As I said in the review at Tweetspeak Poetry, you don’t read
a collection like Citizen and remain
unchanged.
