To mark the publication of Citizen: An American Lyric by award winning poet Claudia Rankine, Penguin Press invite 20 reading groups to read and respond creatively to the collection, currently shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection.
Each participating group will receive a reading pack containing:
• 10 copies of Citizen
• Discussion questions
• Accompanying materials
• Short feedback form to be completed by each member of the reading group and returned to The Reading Agency by beginning of October.
About the book
Citizen is a bold new book exploring mounting racial aggressions in 21st century Western daily life and in the media.
Awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry in America after becoming the first book in the prize’s history to be a finalist in both the poetry and criticism categories, Citizen weaves essays, images and poetry together to form a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our ostensibly “post-race” society.
About the author
Claudia Rankine is the author of four previous books, including Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric. She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and the winner of the 2014 Jackson Poetry Prize. She teaches at Pomona College in Claremont, California.
Optional creative response activity
Alongside the questionnaire to be completed and returned to The Reading Agency, we would also like to invite participating groups to respond creatively either as individuals or as a group to the collection in the following way:
Citizen is a collection of poems, and is strikingly experimental in the way it presents of issues of race and society.
After finishing the book, what do you think could be an interesting addition to Citizen’s collection?
This could be a longer review or original creative piece such as a response to a news story either from the UK or internationally. It could also be a quote, a clip from a film, a poem or anything you can think of. We will publish the responses as well as answers to the questionnaire in an article on Reading Groups for Everyone. Note: we will only publish content that we deem appropriate
To take part, please log in to complete the survey below by 4 August.
