A provocative meditation on race, Claudia Rankine's long-awaited follow up to her groundbreaking book "Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric
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Claudia Rankine's bold new book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV--everywhere, all the time. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person's ability to speak, perform, and stay alive. Our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging, Rankine argues, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship. In essay, image, and poetry, "Citizen" is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named "post-race" society.

‘Johnson is a leading voice of his generation.’ – New York Times The most comprehensive publication to date on widely celebrated artist Rashid Johnson Working with a variety of media that includes painting, sculpture, photography, video, and performance, Rashid Johnson has created a nuanced and iconographic body of work that connects literature, music, and art. Personal references and pervasive cultural narratives are interweaved with the legacy of modernist abstraction, producing what critics have labelled ‘conceptual post-black art’. A precocious talent (his work was included in the seminal ‘Freestyle’ exhibition in New York in 2001), Johnson received the High Museum of Art’s David C. Driskell Prize, which honours contributions in the field of African-American art.

With a new introduction by Calvin Bedient Claudia Rankine's second poetry collection, The End of the Alphabet, is an inquiry into despair and recovery, selfhood and alienation. Centered on a heroine named Jane, these poems--obsessive, intrepid, erotic--speak in the aftermath of a life-altering tragedy, attempting to make peace with loss and find redemption through mourning. Rankine writes with unflinching attention to exterior detail and emotional nuance, as well as with linguistic and formal innovation, crafting an extraordinarily powerful, utterly unique portrait of sorrow and strength. Drawing on voices from Jane Eyre to Lady MacBeth, Rankine welds the cerebral and the spiritual, the sensual and the grotesque, courting paradox into the center of her voice. Whether writing about intimacy or alienation, what remains long after, in searing echo, is this voice--its beguiling cadence and vivid physicality. There is an unprotected quality to this writing, as if each word has been pushed out along the precipice, daring us to go with it. Rankine's power lies in the intoxicating pull of that dare. Beyond all else, these poems will leave the reader changed, for The End of the Alphabet is the work of one of the most intriguing voices in contemporary poetry.

WINNER OF THE FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST COLLECTION 2015 WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR POETRY 2015 WINNER OF THE PEN OPEN BOOK AWARD 2015 WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE FOR POETRY 2015 'Everywhere were flashes, a siren sounding and a stretched-out roar. Get on the ground. Get on the ground now. Then I just knew. 'And you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description.' In this moving, critical and fiercely intelligent collection of prose poems, Claudia Rankine examines the experience of race and racism in Western society through sharp vignettes of everyday discrimination and prejudice, and longer meditations on the violence - whether linguistic or physical - which has impacted the lives of Serena Williams, Zinedine Zidane, Mark Duggan and others. Citizen weaves essays, images and poetry together to form a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in an ostensibly 'post-race' society.

Artist Rachel Jones's first publication, say cheeeeese, is published to accompany her new commission at Chisenhale Gallery, London, in spring 2022. For her first solo exhibition in an institution, she has developed her chosen materials of oil pastels and oil sticks to produce a new body of paintings on canvas and paper. The publication will feature reproductions of new works by Jones alongside her photo essay and newly commissioned texts by poet and artist Anaïs Duplan; Chisenhale Gallery Senior Curator, Ellen Greig; curator and researcher Aïcha Mehrez; poet, essayist, playwright, and MacArthur Fellow Claudia Rankine; and curator Yates Norton; with a foreword by Chisenhale Gallery Director, Zoé Whitley.

Her third collection of poetry, Claudia Rankine's Plot is original and enchanting, and the language, as in her acclaimed The End of the Alphabet, never ceases to startle and confront.

Plot is a postmodern dialogue about pregnancy and childbirth. Liv, the expectant mother, and her husband, Erland, find themselves propelled into one of our most basic plots -- boy loves girl, girl gets pregnant. Liv's respect for life, however, makes her reluctant to bring a new life into the world. The couple's electrifying journey is charted through dreams, conversations, and reflections. A text like no other, it crosses genres, existing at times in poetry, at times in dialogue and prose, in order to arrive at new life and baby Ersatz. This stunning, avant-garde performance enacts what it means to be human, and to invest in humanity.

The stunningly original exploration of pregnancy and childbirth by the acclaimed author of Citizen In this, the landmark achievement that crowned the first phase of her writing career, Claudia Rankine invites us into the lives of Liv and her husband Erland, as they find themselves propelled into the classic plot: boy loves girl, girl gets pregnant. The couple's journey is charted through dreams, conversations and reflections, in a text like no other, deftly moulding language and crossing genres to arrive at new life: baby Ersatz. Plot is an inventive and engrossing meditation on pregnancy and the changes it heralds: the potential bodily cost, the loss of self, the sense of impending stasis. Each fear compounds Liv's reluctance to bring new life into a bewildering world. A profoundly daring collection, it explodes the emotive capabilities of language and form to achieve an unparalleled understanding of creation and existence.

The award-winning poet's powerful exploration of an America ever more unable to process its own toxins Here, available for the first time in the UK, is the book in which Claudia Rankine first developed the 'American Lyric' form which makes her Forward Prize-winning collection Citizen so distinctive: an original combination of poetry, lyric essay, photography and visual art, virtuosically deployed. Don't Let Me Be Lonely is Rankine's meditation on the self bewildered by race riots, terrorism, medicated depression and television's ubiquitous influence. Written in the years after 9/11, this is an unflinching and deeply felt meditation on life and death in a nation in flux.

A TLS, FINANCIAL TIMES, NEW STATESMAN, GUARDIAN, OBSERVER AND WHITE REVIEW BOOK OF THE YEAR FINALIST FOR THE 2021 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN NONFICTION From award-winning writer Claudia Rankine, the stunning follow-up to Citizen and Don't Let Me Be Lonely 'Riveting' Bernardine Evaristo, TLS (Books of the Year) 'Brilliant' Gary Younge, New Statesman (Books of the Year) 'Timely and powerful' Fatima Bhutto, Financial Times 'One of our time's most incisive, brilliant and necessary intellectuals' Sean Hewitt, Irish Times 'Ranking is a writer of genius' Jeremy Noel-Tod, Sunday Times At home and in government, contemporary America finds itself riven by a culture war in which aggression and defensiveness alike are on the rise. It is not alone. In such partisan conditions, how can humans best approach one another across our differences? Taking the study of whiteness and white supremacy as a guiding light, Claudia Rankine explores a series of real encounters with friends and strangers - each disrupting the false comfort of spaces where our public and private lives intersect, like the airport, the theatre, the dinner party and the voting booth - and urges us to enter into the conversations which could offer the only humane pathways through this moment of division. Just Us is an invitation to discover what it takes to stay in the room together, and to breach the silence, guilt and violence that surround whiteness. Brilliantly arranging essays, images and poems along with the voices and rebuttals of others, it counterpoints Rankine's own text with facing-page notes and commentary, and closes with a bravura study of women confronting the political and cultural implications of dyeing their hair blonde. Wry, vulnerable and prescient, this is Rankine's most intimate work, less interested in being right than in being true, and being together.

The Penguin Modern Poets are succinct, collectible, lovingly-assembled guides to the richness and diversity of contemporary poetry, from the UK, America and beyond. Every volume brings together representative selections from the work of three poets now writing, allowing the seasoned poetry lover and the curious reader alike to encounter our most exciting new voices. Volume 6, Die Deeper into Life, features the work of Maggie Nelson and Claudia Rankine, the two American poets who, in hybrid books bridging the divide between poetry, lyric prose, life-writing and theory such as Bluets, The Argonauts, Don't Let Me Be Lonely and Citizen, have transformed the literary landscape over the last 15 years, alongside that of Denise Riley, who for decades has been exploring closely related concerns - motherhood; identity and oppression; loss; the language and words that build, or assault, our selves - as one of the best-kept secrets of British poetry, now fittingly recognized by a string of shortlistings and awards. These are writers who combine deep thought with deep feeling to illuminate our world, how we suffer in it, how we resist it, and how we can live with and love it.