Claudia Rankine

Uh, like, everything about it, it's like who hasn't held a copy of a literary magazine and been like, "Oh yeah, this is the future." Right? Like, I still get the Paris Review.

I mean, and sometimes it's exciting to see a redesign and just be like, "Okay, this is where I need..." Or, like, you're holding a book by Claudia Rankine, right? And you've got the p- you've got the pages of the art and the wor- and it's just like, "Oh, right.

This is why we do what we do." Did you surprise yourself at all while you were writing Peck & Peck?

Oh, yeah, 'cause I didn't like poetry.

It's so great to see you all.

Thank you all on behalf of everyone at the London Review Bookshop, to St. Giles in the Fields Church, um, to welcome Claudia Rankine to celebrate the publication of Triage, um, published earlier this month, um, in the UK and the US at the same time perhaps.

Small, cute, little note, if you don't know, this church is also known as the Poet's Church because of its long literary associations.

Um, so that's nice, isn't it? It's a delight to have you here, Claudia, thank you.

And she mentioned me, and you asked about my work, and you wrote in this book for me, "Victoria, moving towards you." And I left that book at home, but that happened, and it, it means a lot to me, so thank you for being here, and we're, um, we're very honored to, to have you.

I'm gonna open with an introduction just speaking about Claudia and her work, and then we'll get into some questions.

Claudia Rankine is a poet of quiet, steady witness.

Her ability to lay the interior bare is unmatched, perhaps paralleled only by her unceasing determination to go there at all.

Today's conversation continues a remarkable stretch for me this year of guests returning to the show after an unusually long stretch of time.

First with Valeria Luiselli, who returned after 11 years, then Claudia Rankine after 12, and then China Miéville, who was actually the fourth person I ever interviewed, coming back after 15 years.

All three of the original conversations were remarkable, but there was such satisfaction to account for the passage of time together in all three of these new conversations.

The wait made their returns that much sweeter, and I think it made the conversations that much deeper as our second conversation spoke both back across time and forward into the future.

I'm David Neiman, your host.

Today's guest, poet and visual artist Layli Long Soldier, holds a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA from Bard College.

She was first on the show eight years ago now to discuss her landmark poetry collection, Whereas, a book that has, much like Claudia Rankine's Citizen, Solmaz Sharif's Look, and Natalie Diaz's Postcolonial Love Poem, endured as a touchstone of 21st century poetry.

A finalist for the National Book Award, Whereas won the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry.

In fact, this past week was just announced as a MacArthur Fellowship winner.

Some of the faculty members that have come through town, we had Claudia Rankin here last week, and she was a past faculty member.

She's a terrific writer that's come through Houston recently.

Robert Boswell, Nick Flynn, Tony Nelson, Chitra Devakaruni.

It's the sort of book that isn't quite up my street.

I would compare it to Claudia Rankine's celebrated books too.

maybe Lely, Long Soldiers, Whereas, and so on.

It's very much a conceptual book in a sort of an art school meaning of the word conceptual.

It, you know, it's, it's, It's an intellectual book, and again, a marvellous achievement as an intellectual book.

As I said, it doesn't trade in difficulty.

There was one other Irish poet I know who wanted to borrow the technique that is more common among American poets, such as Claudia Rankine, Lady Long Soldier, Paisley Rectal.

But you can borrow the form, you can borrow the concepts, but you still have to write well.

Phyllis Wheatley created the bedrock upon which generations of Black writers would flourish.

Poets like Robert Hayden, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni, and Claudia Rankine are all part of her lineage.

Even rappers like Lauryn Hill or Kendrick Lamar can look at the impact of Phillis Wheatley on Black poetry and rhetoric as a part of their own origin story.

So whether you're bopping to the Fugees or Drake, thank Phillis Wheatley.