Sister Mariella Gable Series book winner claims another award in London

A poet who received the 2014 Sister Mariella Gable Award from the College of Saint Benedict continues to win accolades for her work.

Claudia Rankine received the top award at the Forward Prizes for Poetry Sept. 28 in London for her book "Citizen: An American Lyric." She received the Forward Prize for Best Collection and a prize of 10,000 pounds (just over $15,000).

The book was described by a jury as a "powerful book for our time," according to a story in The Guardian newspaper. The story added that A.L. Kennedy, the chair of judges, said that "this is writing we can recommend with real urgency and joy. It's a stylistically daring poetic project about the dehumanization of those deemed outsiders - we found it exhilarating and genuinely transformative."

The Sister Mariella Gable Award is given each year by CSB to an important work of literature published by Graywolf Press, and is named in honor of the late Sister Mariella Gable, who was a Dante scholar, poet, editor, writer and champion of new fiction. She was an outstanding English professor who taught at CSB from 1928-73.

In essay and prose poems, "Citizen" investigates the ways in which racism pervades daily American life. Rankine's "arrestingly forthright, emotionally authentic, and artistically lithe inquiry induces us to question and protest every racial assault against our individual and collective humanity," according to Booklist magazine.

In addition to the Sister Mariella Gable Award, "Citizen" received the NAACP Image Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a National Book Critic Circle Award and the PEN Open Book Award. It also was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Rankine visited with students from the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University during her residency Jan. 27-30. Besides a public reading, she spoke to English, communication and book arts classes during her residency.

Graywolf Press and the Literary Arts Institute (LAI) at CSB have formed a partnership, exploring innovative ways to promote the literary arts on campus, to audiences in the surrounding area and in the Twin Cities. Among some of the most well-known poets who have visited CSB are Seamus Heaney, Fanny Howe, Diane Ackerman, Nick Flynn, Elizabeth Alexander and Jorie Graham.