9TH ANNUAL NAPOMO 30/30/30 :: DAY 19 :: Ramya Ramana on Camille Rankine
Poets You Always Come Back To: An Interview with Camille Rankine
I knew when Lisa-Ann reached out to me with this opportunity that I wanted to interview Camille Rankine. I first met Camille Rankine in the fluorescent-lit rooms at The New School — yes, I am lucky enough to have her as my professor. During class, I always notice that her wisdom is thorough, is helpful and is always always fair. So I had to know the root of where it all comes from.
Rankine’s poems take us from one space and into another, without missing a step along the way. She molds words in directions and tells stories that leave you speechless. There is so much to ask with a writer like this, and not enough time in the world to. Rankine was so gracious that it is as if she answered all the ones I didn’t get to ask too.
Camille Rankine is the daughter of Jamaican immigrants. Her first book of poetry, Incorrect Merciful Impulses, was published in 2016 by Copper Canyon Press, and her chapbook, Slow Dance with Trip Wire, was selected by Cornelius Eady for the Poetry Society of America’s 2010 New York Chapbook Fellowship. She is the recipient of a 2010’s ” Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize, and fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her poetry has appeared in Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, Gulf Coast, The New Yorker, The New York Times, A Public Space, Tin House, and elsewhere. She serves as president of the board of The Poetry Project, co-chairs the Brooklyn Book Festival Poetry Committee, and is a visiting assistant professor at The New School.
Ramana: I’d love to know a little bit about why and when you started writing. Did you always know you were a writer?
Rankine: I didn’t always know I was a writer, by any stretch. I was always a creative person, and having some sort of creative outlet has always been necessary for me, but through high school and into college I was more drawn to other creative pursuits — I played piano, I sang in choirs, I like to draw and take photographs. I started writing more seriously in college, and after I graduated, I decided that I wanted to make writing a serious part of my life. That’s when I started applying for MFA programs. It’s actually a little surprising to me, looking back, that that is the direction I went. But I think that compared to music and visual art, writing — I suppose because it’s made of language — offered a way for me to be expressive and communicate in a way I hadn’t managed with other arts.
Ramana: When you are crafting your work, are there specific tools or technical skills you use to make a poem a resonating poem?
Rankine: I don’t think I have specific tools that I consciously rely on to create a sense of resonance. I guess I would say I try to be specific in a poem, and I’m always trying to say the thing exactly as I mean it, and carve away anything that gets in the way of that, so that every word feels absolutely necessary. And that way, if I can get it right, it’s like every line in the poem is slicing through the air, echoing into the quiet space. That’s not what every poem is up to, but I’d say “The Current Isolationism” is a poem driven by that sensibility.
Ramana: Do you have a goal in mind when writing a poem?
Rankine: I’m not sure that I have a particular goal in mind when I write a poem. But I do hope for my poems to speak to the larger world, a world larger than just me. And I do want to avoid any kind of monolithic thinking. I want to represent more complexity than that, so my work tends more toward ambiguity, ambivalence, contradiction–they all seem more representative of reality to me. Nothing in life is simple or certain, after all.
Ramana: Is there a poem you always go back to or one that has deeply impacted you? If so, how/why?
Rankine: There are many poems that I go back to! Lucille Clifton’s “won’t you celebrate with me,” Yusef Komunyakaa’s “The Dead at Quang Tri.” I think the poems that stay with me are the ones that crystalize something I’ve felt but didn’t think to identify as a feeling or put words to, that seem to reveal something that was always with me. And the ones that make me feel haunted. Especially those. Then there are those that I came to early in my poetry reading life, that stick with me for their music, the way they move. Like Anne Sexton’s “Her Kind.” The strength and certainty of her voice really held me, and I remember feeling, when I first read it, I want to make something that looks you dead in the eye like that.
“This is the story, as I know it. One morning:
the ships came, as foretold, and death
pearl-handled, almost
and completely.”
History, Camille Rankine
Ramya Ramana is a writer, educator, AP Poet and the previous NYC Youth Poet Laureate. She graduated from St. John’s University with a degree in English literature and minor in Philosophy. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Poetry at The New School. You can follow her on Instagram: @ramyaramana.
To find out more about Camille Rankine and/or her upcoming projects, please check out her website: http://camillerankine.com
