The Guardian's Top Poetry Books of 2020 Include Diaz, Rankine, and Kapil

The Guardian has selected its favorite poetry books of the year, with Natalie Diaz's Postcolonial Love Poem, Bhanu Kapil's How to Wash a Heart, and Claudia Rankine's Just Us receiving much-deserved praise. About these three, Rishi Dastidar writes:

Natalie Diaz’s meditations on stolen land, stolen water and erased bodies in Postcolonial Love Poem (Faber) are … luminous: “I am your Native, / and this is my American labyrinth.” Her language is rich and epigrammatic, its physicality enhanced by its unruffled cadences. Mining in similar territory, How to Wash a Heart (Pavilion) by Bhanu Kapil sharply explores what it is like to be permanently on edge when you feel like you are permanently a guest as an immigrant.

The lyric essay has proved vital in examining subjects often difficult or ignored. Notable in this regard is Just Us (Allen Lane) by Claudia Rankine, the follow-up to the award-winning Citizen. Subtitled “An American Conversation”, it’s an interrogation of how it might be possible for people to accommodate and make sense of our differences, in race, class and status. Rankine is as hard and unflinching on herself as she is on her interlocutors.

Check out their other selections here.