400 Years Of Racism Book Discussion: How to Carry Water

Our 400 Years of Racism reading & discussion series continues in 2022. 

Order How to Carry Water: Selected Poets of Lucille Clifton on Folio's Bookshop >>

How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton celebrates both familiar and lesser-known works by one of America’s most beloved poets, including 10 newly discovered poems that have never been collected.

These poems celebrating black womanhood and resilience shimmer with intellect, insight, humor, and joy, all in Clifton’s characteristic style―a voice that the late Toni Morrison described as “seductive with the simplicity of an atom, which is to say highly complex, explosive underneath an apparent quietude.” Selected and introduced by award-winning poet Aracelis Girmay, this volume of Clifton’s poetry is simultaneously timeless and fitting for today’s tumultuous moment.

About the Author 

Lucille Clifton was one of the most distinguished, decorated and beloved poets of her time. She won the National Book Award for Poetry for "Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000" and was the first African American female recipient of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement from the Poetry Foundation. Ms. Clifton received many additional honors throughout her career, including the Discovery Award from the New York YW/YMHA Poetry Center in 1969 for her first collection "Good Times," a 1976 Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for the television special "Free to Be You and Me," a Lannan Literary Award in 1994, and the Robert Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America in 2010. Her honors and awards give testa­ment to the universality of her unique and resonant voice. She was named a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library in 1996, served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1999 to 2005, and was elected a Fellow in Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1987, she became the first author to have two books of poetry – "Good Woman" and "Next" – chosen as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in the same year. She was also the author of eighteen children’s books, and in 1984 received the Coretta Scott King Award from the American Library Association for her book "Everett Anderson’s Good-bye."