Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Free Thinking

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

The ideas shaping our lives today - with artists and thinkers in debates and interviews.

The ideas shaping our lives today - with leading artists and thinkers in extended interview and debate.

r3arts

Free Thinking: 2015 Festival

Claudia Rankine

Matthew Sweet

Zahid Warley

Free Thinking: 2015 Festival: Claudia Rankine

06/11/2015

2015 Festival

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, 2015 Festival, Claudia Rankine

Claudia Rankine gives a lecture exploring language and racism past and present.

From Sage Gateshead, American poet Claudia Rankine gives the opening lecture of Radio 3's 2015 Free Thinking Festival, focusing on race, politics and the power of language.

This year's Free Thinking Lecture is given by the American poet Claudia Rankine. Her book 'Citizen: An American Lyric' is a New York Times best seller and has become an instant classic. At one of the most volatile moments in American race history, her meditations on the language used to describe tennis star Serena Williams and on events such as the Ferguson riots and the shooting of the teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida provide the vehicle for an incisive interrogation of justice and injustice, exposing the myth of a 'post-racial' 21st century.

A professor of English at the University of Southern California and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Claudia Rankine grew up first in Kingston Jamaica and then New York City and has also lived in England. 'Citizen' has been called 'the book of a generation' and one which 'throws a Molotov cocktail' at the idea that the struggle against racial injustice has been won.

The winner of this year's Forward Prize for Poetry, the PEN Open Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award comes to Sage Gateshead to talk to Free Thinking presenter Matthew Sweet about the power of language and what it means to be black in the new millennium.

Recorded in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Events from the 2015 Free Thinking festival. The theme is 'tearing up the rule book'

Series of events from the 2015 Free Thinking festival. The theme is 'tearing up the rule book'

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Free Thinking

2015 Festival

Claudia Rankine

Contributors

Genres

Formats

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3