Claudia Rankine's Next Book Will Be About the Culture of Cancer

Holy Moley, The Guardian is on a roll: in addition to reporting on the 2015 Academy of American Poets Prizes, it shares this scoop from the desk of Claudia Rankine. The story begins with Rankine's conversation with Carrie Mae Weems at the NYPL and ends with a rather exciting revelation. From The Guardian:

On the courts of the US Open in Queens on Tuesday, crowds were riveted as Serena Williams played (and won) against her sister Venus. The following night in Midtown Manhattan saw another, quieter example of “black excellence”: a conversation between Carrie Mae Weems, a 2013 MacArthur fellowship recipient, and the poet Claudia Rankine, author of this year’s much-cited book Citizen: An American Lyric, on race, bodies, art and poetry.

The two were introduced by Princeton professor and poet Elizabeth Alexander, who called Weems and Rankine “our chroniclers”. The description is apt. Since it was published last fall, Citizen has become an oft-cited moral authority in the Black Lives Matter movement. Weems deftly chronicled the lives of black women in her artwork such as her photography series Kitchen Table.

The pairing came as part of a four-part series of conversations between poets and artists, co-sponsored by the New York Public Library and the Academy of American Poets, to explore “how different art forms engage with poetry”. (Both Rankine and Alexander serve on the Academy of American Poets Board of Chancellors.)

Weems began by asking about the visuality of Rankine’s work and how her poems and lyric essays are often paired or juxtaposed with images. “Race is structural in our country, but it’s often triggered by the visual,” Rankine replied, adding that the visual of normal, everyday actions, such as speaking on the phone, can shift into characterising the individual by their body: the black body. The timeliness of Citizen cannot be overstated. In the edition sold at the event, Rankine’s In Memory listing has been updated to include Freddie Gray, who died after fatal injuries sustained during a Baltimore police transport. [...]

More at The Guardian.