Poetry: Christian Campbell

Congratulations to Carribean poet Christian Campbell who won the Aldeburgh first collection prize for poetry on Friday! I was just reading his collection, Running the Dusk. Here is a poem from that collection:

Legba

A well-loved lit classic
packed in each bag, and a Harvard
sweatshirt to match the Pakistani
passport -- Iqbal goes first, catching
a flight to France. Then me,
in a tie and soft pants, khaki hat
to keep my head tame. We chat
clipped and colonial, like our tutors,
grinning out Oxford with a nod.
At immigration I put on airs
and styles, let the maleness growl
without teeth. Hold my chest
with untouchable height. All like
a politician, a Sidney Poitier,
an old Bahamian man. I look
only ahead and walk straight-back,
like my grandfather. Speak like he spoke
to foreigners, in his best moods,
he would put on the mouths
of all the Englishmen he'd met,
playing the Queen and how
she gave him his MBE -- Pa.
There, reciting and reciting Blake,
until he fell down blank and silent
as any road in Nassau
the morning after junkanoo.

--copyright Christian Campbell 2010 from Running the Dusk (Peepal Tree Press)

Barbara Kingsolver wins The Orange

Barbara Kingsolver & Ilan Stavans in Conversation
Originally uploaded by LIVEfromtheNYPL

Congratulations to Barbara Kingsolver who is the winner of this year's Orange Prize for her novel, The Lacuna. For more information on her win go here.

Three Powerful Women

On Monday writer Marie NDiaye won France's top literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, for her novel Tres Femmes Puissantes (Three Powerful Women). She is the first black woman to win the award. NDiaye, 42, has published novels, stories and is also an accomplished playwright. For more on NDiaye go here.

Thanks, Tayari!

Pulitzers + Oranges + Interviews + More

The 2009 Pulitzer Prizes were announced this week. Elizabeth Strout won for her story collection Olive Kitteridge about an overweight, unglamorous, middle American woman.

The Orange Prize nominees were announced. The Orange Prize is a UK literary award given to a woman who has written the best novel in the past year. Three American writers were named including Marilynne Robinson who was nominated for her novel Home.

Novelist and professor of creative writing Tayari Jones talks about revision and the young writer.

Maud Newton interviews The Book of Night Women author Marlon James.

And I'm wishing good luck to Erik Hollis from Tucson who competes in the Poetry Out Loud nationals this weekend and Want Chyi who defends her MFA thesis, a novel, today at ASU.