My final review for the TS Eliot Prize is now live on the Poety Book Society’s Poetry Portal – and what a book to finish with.
As I left work one bright September evening, Front Row snapped into life, mid segment, as I turned the ignition.
With no prior knowledge of either book or author, I heard Claudia Rankine read from Citizen. Her delivery – the gentlest of deliveries – hit as hard as anything I have ever heard.
I decided to buy and share this book with my colleagues at school long before she had finished speaking.
If you haven’t read this one yet, bag a copy now – it’s timely and necessary.
I’ll be tweeting from the awards ceremony on Sunday evening.
Buy Citizen from Penguin Books
Thanks for the tip. I will have a listen.
Powerful and desperately sad. I see the same issue here in Italy in the treatment of the refugees that I work with from West Africa (invisibility, fear in the white space) and Afghans (alienated, suspected and searched).