Video: Lucille Clifton reads her poems at Lannan
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Lucille Clifton was born in 1936 in Depew, New York and died in 2010 in Baltimore, Maryland. Her luminous and incisive poems have been published in nine books, including The Book of Light, Quilting, and Next. She was Distinguished Professor for Humanities at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and has won numerous awards, including a Lannan Literary Award for Poetry in 1996.
She said, “I’ve always been a person who found more interesting the stories between the stories. I’ve always wondered the hows and the whys to things. Why is this like this? What has gone into making us who we are? Is it good or not so good? What is destroying us? What will keep us warm?”
This reading took place May 21, 1996 in Los Angeles, CA. To learn more about the public events sponsored by the Lannan Foundation, please click here.
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Lucille Clifton (credit: Poetry Foundation)
