Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on May 6, 2015.
This event was part of the Lannan Literary series.
Claudia Rankine is the author of five collections of poetry, including, most recently, Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf, 2014) which continues Rankine’s unique genre and presents a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism on society. Another collection, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely (Graywolf, 2004), is a multi-genre experimental project, blending poetry, essays, and images, of which she writes, “Forgiveness, I finally decide, is not the death of amnesia, nor is it a form of madness as Derrida claims. For the one who forgives, it is simply a death, a dying down in the heart, the position of the already dead.” In praise, Jorie Graham wrote, “Rankine breaks out of virtual emotion, reawakens honesty, and exhibits such raw political courage and aesthetic bravery it sends tremors through the entire field of American poetry as she finds it.”
Her plays include Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue, which was commissioned by the Foundry Theatre, and Existing Conditions (co-authored with Casey Llewellyn).
In this episode she is joined in conversation with Saskia Hamilton. The companion Reading episode may be found here.
You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website; you may also listen to the audio recording of this event there.
Additional photos of this event are available on Flickr.