Danez Smith: Bluff
Join us for an event celebrating the searing new poetry collection from the Forward Prize-winning American poet with a devoted online and international following.
Bluff is a new collection about the year that the world’s gaze turned to Minneapolis – Smith’s own home.
Written after two years of artistic silence, during which the world came to a halt due to the Covid-19 pandemic and Minneapolis became the epicentre of protest following the murder of George Floyd, Bluff is Danez Smith’s powerful reckoning with their role and responsibility as a poet and with their hometown.
This is a book of awakening out of violence, guilt, shame and critical pessimism to imagine how we can strive towards a new existence in a world that seems to be dissolving into desolate futures.
Smith brings a startling urgency to these poems, their questions demanding a new language, a deep self-scrutiny and virtuosic textual shapes. A series of ars poetica gives way to ‘anti poetica’ and ‘ars america’ to implicate poetry’s collusions with unchecked capitalism.
A brilliant long poem maps the history of Minneapolis-Saint Paul’s vibrant Rondo neighbourhood before and after officials decided to run an interstate directly through it.
Bluff is a manifesto about artistic resilience when the places we most love – those given and made – are burning. In this collection, Smith turns to honesty, hope, rage and imagination to envision futures that seem possible.
Need to know
Times & tickets
Dates, times and prices
Dates & times
26 Oct 2024, 3pm
Run time
1 hour and 15 minutes (approx)
All timings are approximate and subject to change
Standard entry
from £12.00*
* Excludes £3.50 booking fee.
Book as early as you can to ensure the best choice of tickets. Ticket prices may be adjusted without notice to reflect demand.
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For your visit
This event is held at the Purcell Room Southbank Centre
The Purcell Room is located in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, which is open from 90 minutes before events start until they finish. It’s closed at all other times.
Plan your visit
The Purcell Room is an auditorium located within our Queen Elizabeth Hall.
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Food & drink
Within the Queen Elizabeth Hall you’ll find our glass-fronted Concrete Cafe, the ideal spot to recharge, or catch up with friends, whilst the bustle of Central London and the River Thames carries on around you.
From coffee to cocktails, filling favourites to fine dining, plus some of London’s best street food – it’s all here at the Southbank Centre.