I Want to See My Skirt by A. Van Jordan & Cauleen Smith
About this edition:
Poetry, 31 pages.
6.25" x 7.75" softcover,
Smyth-sewn binding.
ISBN 978-0-87775-072-7.
Released 1 July 2021. [Permalink]
About this edition:
Poetry, 31 pages.
6.375" x 8.000" hardcover,
Smyth-sewn binding.
ISBN 978-0-87775-101-4.
With dust jacket.
Released 1 July 2021. [Permalink]
Poet A. Van Jordan and filmmaker Cauleen Smith present a story about Roka, a young woman in Bamako, who is on the cusp of adulthood. Who is she, and who will she become? In the narrative, Jordan and Smith evoke the rich atmosphere of a Bamako that is also on the edge of uncertain change. Jordan's poems inhabit the voices of Roka's social circle as she prepares for a community dance with her boyfriend Shango. Ten tipped-in images by Smith illuminate Roka's world.
A. VAN JORDAN is the author of four collections: Rise, which won the PEN / Oakland Josephine Miles Award (Tia Chucha Press, 2001); M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A (2005), which was listed as one the Best Books of 2005 by The London Times; Quantum Lyrics (2007); and The Cineaste (2013), W.W. Norton & Co. Jordan has been awarded a Whiting Writers Award, an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and a Pushcart Prize. He is also a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2007), a United States Artists Fellowship (2009), and a Lannan Literary Award in Poetry (2015). He serves as the Robert Hayden Collegiate Professor of English Language & Literature at The University of Michigan.
CAULEEN SMITH was raised in Sacramento to California and lives in Los Angeles. Smith is Art Program faculty at California Institute of the Arts. She has a BA in Creative Arts from San Francisco State University and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Theater Film and Television. Smith’s short films, feature film, an installation, and a performance were work showcased at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2019. Smith has had solo exhibitions at The Whitney Museum of American Art, MassMoCA, and LACMA. Smith is the recipient of the following awards: Rockefeller Media Arts Award, Creative Capital Film/Video Grant, Chicago 3Arts Grant, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant, Chicago Expo Artadia Award, Rauschenberg Residency, Herb Alpert Awards in the Arts in Film and Video (2016), and United States Artists Award (2017). She is the 2016 inaugural recipient of the Ellsworth Kelly Award, a 2020 recipient of the Studio Museum Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize, and a 2021 recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.
